Snatched 37
by Mackiecam
Summary: Someone is stealing bodies from the cemetery and Joe has fingered Simon Diggory for the crime. Steph doesn't think he's responsible. Meanwhile, Ranger has to go to Little Rock and Steph is put on sick leave. But helping Simon isn't work, right? A babe and posted 2 x day
1. Chapter 1

_The following story is a work of fiction_ _that features characters developed by Janet Evanovich. No money has been earned through writing this story. Any similarities to real events or persons are entirely coincidental. _

_Although a stand-alone, this book builds upon the previous books in my series. Because it is a stand-alone, however, there is a lot of review in the first chapter and a lot of explanation of how I have changed the characters and backstories from JE's. I know some people find that a bit tedious. If you are sensitive to that and don't want the review, feel free to skip reading the first chapter._

_Out of the previous books in my series, the first one is a bit cupcake-y, but the rest are pure babes and develop the relationships between the characters. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest that you read them in the following order:_

_22 Caliber_

_Trigger Happy 23 _

_Morelli's Argument 23.5_

_Ranger 23.75_

_Threatening 24_

_Fixation 25_

_Security 26_

_Sneaky 27_

_Date Night at the Movies 27.1_

_Meeting Maria 27.2_

_The Intervention 27.3_

_Envious 28_

_Dickie's Demise 28.1_

_Mob Matters 28.2_

_Altercation at Giovichinni's 28.3_

_Numbskull 29_

_Toxic 30_

_Obit 31_

_Tamper 32_

_Theft 33_

_Forced 34_

_Fiesta 35_

_Step 36_

_In recognition of the fact that I'm a binge reader and don't personally like to wait for updates, I will try to post twice a day, barring unseen life events._

_Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated. I have a few people who regularly review for me, and I'd like to thank you for that. Your reviews have given me the confidence to write another story. I appreciate all reviews and try to respond to each and every one. I have found periodically that the fan fiction site won't let me respond to reviews. If I don't respond, please have faith that I have seen it and won't let me reply. Please note that I also cannot respond to reviews that have been posted by guests._

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

_~ Sarah ~_

**Chapter One**

Ranger escorted me into the doctor's office. "I should only be gone for four days", he said. "I'm travelling to Little Rock on Sunday, spending the next day with the Little Rock team and firing the current Executive Director, hiring Bill as the Executive Director the day after that and introducing him to the team and, after the team is assembled, working with them to introduce our corporate value and mission statements and overview the responsibilities associated with each of the jobs. The day after that, I'll be coming home. So I'll be away three nights or four days." Ranger, or Ricardo Carlos Manoso, was my husband of four weeks. He was the CEO and owner of Rangeman, an elite private security company that did everything from high-end system design to cybersecurity to investigative services to monitoring to research. The last was my area of specialty, and as research director we looked into private individuals and corporations to discover the secrets that everyone wanted to remain hidden. We did this for police departments, private corporations, or our in-house needs. Ranger had a head office here in Trenton – which was where Ranger and I worked – but also had an established satellite office in Miami. Three weeks ago, though, Ranger had bought Pearl Security from his friend, and had expanded into five other locations. It had effectively tripled the size of his company.

He had talked to the Executive Directors for each of the locations and had liked all of them except one, the one in Little Rock. However, he had a friend in Little Rock who was looking for a job, and his friend had the experience necessary to guide the Little Rock office effectively. Ranger was going down to Little Rock to fire Randy and hire Bill.

Ranger was one of the best security specialists in the country. A former Ranger, he was one of the top five system designers in the US for high-end security systems, and had redesigned the system used by MoMA in New York and the system used in the White House, amongst others. He provided security guards to over two hundred locations and was now, with the purchase of Pearl, expanding into an additional thousand locations. He was the unit commander for two Emergency Response Teams in Trenton, teams that were formed of all special ops soldiers, with each team being comprised of a sniper, a munitions expert, a medic, a communication specialist, and so on. They were the most trained emergency response teams outside the military.

If you searched for information about Ranger, however, you would see his manufactured history – a degree from Douglass College in business. Ranger had been a US Ranger for the first ten years of his working life. When he retired from the army, the government had set up a new identity for him similar to one that would be manufactured for someone in witness protection or the CIA. The only fact on his file that stayed the same was his name. Even his social security number had changed. You would not read about the medals he had earned as a US Ranger, or the missions he had been on. You would also not read about his part-ownership in PMC, a private for-profit group of mercenaries who did all the jobs that the government said were impossible. They worked for a variety of governments in a variety of places in the world. With Ranger's Hispanic looks and fluency in Spanish, he specialized in working in Central and South America in the War on Drugs.

Ranger had retired from both the US Army and PMC, but his history with them made him a little anal about personal security. Ranger had been on some missions that had pissed off a variety of terrorists and drug lords in the past, and since neither of those groups were known for their sense of humor, they both had people gunning for him. He wasn't worried for himself, but he was worried for me. As he said, I was his Achilles' heel, and if people wanted to hurt him all they had to do was to hurt me. He was so worried about that spillover of danger, in fact, that he almost didn't get together with me. After a few years of thinking about it, he eventually decided that I would be his Achilles' heel whether we were together or just friends, and he might as well get the pleasure of being in a relationship with me. I was glad. Ranger had been my best friend for some time.

His missions, both as a US Ranger and as a member of PMC, were highly classified and although people knew that he had been a Ranger – after all it was in his name – his involvement with PMC was a closely guarded secret. Ranger had told me when he gave me the option to back out of a relationship with him. We had been floating together and Ranger wanted me to be aware of the danger that was posed by my association with him. He told me like I should have run the other way. I decided that I would rather take the increased danger and be with him than be relatively safer and not.

To help keep me safe, Ranger instituted some security measures. For one, he bought me a very nice watch that had a tracking device and a panic button in it. If I pushed the panic button, the control room at Rangeman would know to track my whereabouts and to immediately send one of the ERTs to my location. Unfortunately, I'd had the need to push that button more than a few times since Ranger had given me that watch nine months ago. Ranger also tracked my phone, my car's location and my purse's location. He'd been doing the latter two for years, and although at first I had resented that intrusion on my privacy, that tracking had been periodically so helpful that I had learned to be appreciative of the security it provided.

Now that security was even more important. I was not only Mrs. Ranger, but I was also expecting Ranger's baby. I was twenty-four weeks pregnant with baby Tia Rose. She was due July fourth, and Ranger and I were incredibly excited.

It had been a tumultuous pregnancy. I didn't know I was pregnant until I was five weeks along, and it took me another four weeks after that to get used to the idea. I had never wanted children and I wasn't too sure about the concept of being pregnant. However, when I started bleeding and there was a concern that I might lose the baby, I decided that I really wanted her. That was good, as I was required to spend most of my day flat on my back to give the baby a fighting chance, and for someone who didn't like to rest much, it was torturous. Then, when I was shot twice before Christmas – luckily while wearing a bulletproof jacket – I was again instructed to lie down with my feet up for several hours a day. I was thoroughly tired of resting but, despite my frustration, at a routine doctor's appointment four weeks ago the obstetrician discovered that my blood pressure was elevated, and he instructed me to cut my workweek back to fifty hours from the seventy-five I had been doing. Since I had just cut it down from one hundred hours a week, I hadn't known how I was going to go about that.

Ranger had been upset about the high blood pressure reading though, and had banned me from the office. In theory, it made sense. However, in practice it was a little more challenging to do. While I hadn't been able to cut research responsibilities out completely, I had been able to get my hours down to ten hours a week. Of course, we were on our honeymoon during two of those weeks, and for the other two I'd been in court as a witness to a former case that I'd been involved in.

The problem is that the work was there. My staff was slammed with work, and everyone was working overtime. It wasn't just me. It seemed that the more work we did, the more we impressed people and the more work we acquired. A year ago, I was the only researcher. My department now had fourteen people, including me, six of which were currently being trained. With the new corporate acquisition we'd had to add those six staff to be able to service Pearl's sales inquiries in addition to our existing clients of five bonds offices, four police departments, a mutual fund company, real estate lawyers, and our own internal needs. We had another three policing organizations interested in using our services, another handful of bonds offices, several more real estate lawyers…we simply could not keep ahead of the demand. We were the fastest growing department in the company. My goal was to be caught up by the time the baby was born.

I hoped that the doctor cleared me to go back to work. Ranger had said that, if my blood pressure was down, he'd clear me to work ten hours a week and, if my blood pressure stayed down, he would add work into my schedule ten hours a week at a time. He reminded me that he could do that since he was ultimately my boss. It drove me nuts when he said things like that. Luckily he didn't do that sort of highhanded commands often.

In addition to worrying about the outstanding work, I was bored. Ranger had helped with that a bit – the apartment where we lived was the penthouse to the office building that we worked in. The building was four floors of residences and three floors of office space. However, with all the corporate growth the office was bursting at the seams. He'd rented some temporary office space for the administrative and support services division of the company. In another week or so, we would be breaking ground on another seven-story tower. Once built, all the residences would move over to the new building and our existing building would become dedicated office space. Our apartment, when moved, would go from being just over three thousand square feet to seven thousand, and Ranger intended for us to leave our existing furniture in our existing apartment and only taking the baby's furniture with us when we moved. This meant that we would be starting from scratch in the furnishing and decoration of the apartment and Ranger had asked me, with all my extra time, to design the spaces and source out the furniture that we would need.

"I'll miss you", I said as I thought about Ranger being gone. Despite that Ranger had asked Amelia, one of the Rangeman bodyguards and the person who we would be designating as our nanny, to stay with me I knew it would be a long four days.

Ranger smiled. "I'll miss you as well", he said. "What do you have planned?"

"I thought I'd take Amelia home to my parents for dinner on Sunday", I said. "I also thought I'd take her out shopping so that we can look for things for her room. I planned on looking on Pinterest with her to figure out decor for her bedroom. I have picked out some things, but it would be good if we could finalize a room design for her before the baby is born, and perhaps source some of the furniture."

"That sounds good", said Ranger. He led me to the receptionist and waited until I registered. Minutes later I was weighed and was given a urine sample bottle so that they could test for sugars. And minutes after I had given the nurse the bottle, we were shown into the examining room.

We didn't have long to wait. Dr. Wilson came in seconds later. "Hi", he said. "How was your honeymoon?"

"It was interesting", I said.

"Did the wedding go well?"

"Generally, yes", I said.

"That doesn't sound as positive as I would have liked to have heard."

I laughed.

The doctor took my blood pressure and wrote down the results on the form. He didn't, however, tell us the results. Ranger looked more worried than he did when we arrived.

"Have you had any bodyguards shot recently?" A month and a half ago Amelia and another bodyguard had been protecting me, and Zach got shot. I, however, was fine. The doctor had put my high blood pressure down to my crazy life. I didn't know how to tell him, but having my bodyguard shot was upsetting, but it wasn't as bad as many things that had happened in my life.

I laughed. "No, but I had my hand stabbed and pinned to a desk by a knife", I said. I showed him my hand.

"Good one. Looks like it was five stitches? It's healing well. What happened?"

"We were on our honeymoon and we ran into someone I went to high school with. She told me that she had witnessed a murder and that the killer was a member of the Russian mafia, and that's why she had a number of people trying to kill her. It turned out that she hadn't witnessed a murder at all. She had been helping the Russian mafia guy in his extortion operation, and in all her wisdom she was stealing money from him. The man was understandably upset. His flunkies wanted me to pass the message on to her that the Russian mafia guy wanted his money back. He pinned my hand to the desk to get his message across. However, it all ended well. The FBI captured the Russian mafia guy and his flunkies, the person I went to high school with is in jail waiting for her trial, and we've been able to clean up a huge extortion ring in Atlanta."

"I'm sorry – I thought you were going to Miami for your honeymoon."

"We went there for the first two days."

"Tell me that your time there was smooth sailing."

I laughed. "When Ranger's daughter came up to Trenton from Miami for the wedding, we discovered that she was being stalked by a pedophile. We did some research and realized that the person stalking her was also a drug dealer and was behind a huge drug smuggling ring. Part of our time in Miami was working with the Miami police to make sure that the man was arrested and, because he had diplomatic immunity, that he was deported back to Honduras to face his trial for his pedophile and drug smuggling charges."

"Did you get hurt that time?"

"No, and neither did anyone else. I did, however, want to hurt the pedophile very much."

Dr. Wilson smiled. "I don't blame you. How is work going?"

"Good. Through adding on the other five locations and working with our Miami location, we've decided to centralize the research department and have added enough work to the department that we've had to hire six more researchers and have basically doubled my staff. Until they are hired, my existing staff will be struggling even more than they are. And we are just starting to get caught up on our existing research requests."

"With the influx of work, have you been able to reduce your work week to fifty hours?"

"Ranger actually made me cut out working altogether, but when Julie was being stalked he allowed me to come out of sick leave to research her case and again, when Chastity was in trouble he let me research her case as well. It was by researching their cases we were able to identify what was actually happening and to give the police the information they needed to charge the person responsible. And then, when we got back to Trenton, I had to go to court for a few days to be a witness for some felons."

"How many hours have you been working then?"

"The first week I worked about ten hours, and the next week I worked about eight. The last two weeks I have worked five hours each."

"How is Steph's blood pressure?" said Ranger.

"I'm not going to lie", said Dr. Wilson. "It's not doing well. When Stephanie was here last time, it was 132/80. It is now 138/82." Ranger paled. "It is not a good sign, especially considering that Stephanie has basically cut out work. She is at risk for developing preeclampsia. This affects between five and eight percent of pregnancies and is more common in first-time mothers. If it is a mild case, it causes water retention, high blood pressure, and protein in the urine. In more severe cases it also causes headaches, blurred vision, inability to tolerate bright lights, fatigue, nausea, pain in the abdomen, shortness of breath, and the tendency to bruise easily. It is a very serious condition." He turned to me. "If you have blurred vision, severe headaches, abdominal pain, shortness of breath and/or are urinating very infrequently, I want to know about it immediately and, if my office isn't open, I will want you to go to the hospital.

"In the meantime, I would like to test for protein in your urine to see if you are developing this condition. This means that you will need to go for a 24-hour urine test. I'd also like to do blood tests and send you for another ultrasound to check your baby's growth. I still think that we can treat this without medication, but I will want you to come in once a week as we monitor things. As much as possible, I want you to rest. When you lie down, I want you to lie on your left side to take the weight of the baby off your major blood vessels. I want you to drink at least two liters of water a day, change your diet to include more protein, and add a half hour of yoga to your day."

"The baby can't die from this, can she?" I said.

"It's a very serious condition. In the mother, liver or renal failure and future cardiovascular issues can occur. For the baby, it can prevent the placenta from getting enough blood, which means your baby will get less oxygen and food and can result in a low birth weight. However, the odds favor you. Most women still deliver a healthy baby and the good news is that we have caught this early and are starting treatment early."

"What happens if Steph's blood pressure goes up?" said Ranger.

"We are still in the beginning stages. Stephanie's blood pressure is 138/82 but the real cause for concern is if it is over 140/90. If it continues to go up, we'll put Stephanie on medication. However, I think with rest and not working and all the other things that I recommended, we'll be able to control it without medication."

"Will this mean that I will have trouble with high blood pressure later in life?" I said.

"I can't answer that", said the doctor. "Some women who have gestational hypertension don't regularly have problems with high blood pressure, but some women do."

"Crap", I said. "I was hoping to come in here and be cleared for work."

"I'm sorry", said the doctor. "Instead of clearing you for work, I am taking you off it completely. If you can get your blood pressure down, you can start slowly adding work into your day again."


	2. Chapter 2

After leaving the doctor's office, we went to the lab and had the blood drawn for the tests and was given a large bottle for the urine sample. I looked at the bottle and wondered how I would ever fill it up. It was enormous. I mean, I knew I was peeing more frequently with being pregnant, but that was ridiculous. The lab instructed me to do the test on the Monday and return the bottle to them on the Tuesday, and said that they'd have the results of the test to the doctor by our next Friday appointment.

We then stopped by the imagining lab to make an appointment for an ultrasound. They, by fluke, had a cancellation that had just come in for fifteen minutes later, and Ranger and I jumped at it. While we waited, Ranger said, "I really hate that I have to go away for a few days."

I smiled sadly. "I know. But this is part of it, isn't it? I mean, we knew that you would have to travel more with the purchase of this company and thankfully it isn't travel to another continent. You would be able to get home in the case of an emergency fairly quickly."

"I can't have anything happen to you."

"I don't want something to happen to me either", I said. I leaned over and kissed him. "I'll be fine." I knew, however, that Ranger was very upset. If I had missed the tension around his eyes or the rigidity in his shoulders, I would have figured it out by the tightness with which he was holding my hand. He looked like he was barely holding it together.

I felt bad for him. When I was shot twice before Christmas, Ranger had witnessed it both times. He had seen me in danger before, but that time seemed to make more of an impression. Normally overprotective, he became more so. He wanted to know where I was going, who I was going with, and when I'd be back every single time I left the apartment. He was suffering from nightmares, startling more easily, and wasn't smiling as often as he had before. He was constantly poised for another disaster to occur. As he said, he felt overwhelmed and like he wanted to get off this ride, and he didn't know how much more he could take before he exploded.

Ranger had hired a corporate psychiatrist in December. Most of his Operations staff was former military, and vets weren't known for good mental health. He thought a psychiatrist would be a good support to a lot of people. Since then, the company had also added a corporate psychologist to treat staff. The service was a popular one and sessions were booked a month in advance for both people.

Ranger had started seeing the corporate psychiatrist himself. Gabriel was a good person who had been doing good things for Ranger. With Gabriel's encouragement and guidance, Ranger had cut his work week down to seventy-five hours. Gabriel wanted to see it cut back further until Ranger was working no more than fifty hours in a week. He said it was necessary if Ranger was to have the time to spend with me and Tia after she was born. Ranger was continuing to work on it.

However, in addition to Gabriel making Ranger realize that he was a workaholic and that he was in real danger of burning out, he was helping Ranger deal with his fears. He had an appointment with Ranger in another two hours, and I could only hope that Gabriel would be able to calm Ranger down from this additional stress just as much as he had from previous stresses.

I was incredibly relieved that Ranger was seeing Gabriel. I had noticed that since Ranger had started seeing him, Ranger was more grateful for the little things. That coil inside him that lately had been wound a little too tight was starting to spring open, and Ranger, someone who was traditionally calm and cool and unfazed by life, was starting to reconnect with his Zen. I knew that would be even more important as my pregnancy progressed and after the baby was born. He could not remain as poised for something to go wrong, if for no other reason other than that I needed him to keep me calm. He was my stability, and he had been since we had first become friends.

I had met Ranger five years before, when I had originally been hired as a bounty hunter for my cousin's bail bonds agency. I was supremely unqualified for the role, but a juicy bit of gossip and a chance to blackmail my cousin into the job meant that I had been hired. Ranger felt sorry for me and took me under his wing to teach me the basics so that I wouldn't get hurt. He told me it was love at first sight. I don't know if it was love on my side, but there was definite attraction. However, despite the moves that I had made to indicate to him that I was interested, he never asked me out. So I started going out with Joe Morelli, a detective in the Trenton Police Department. Joe's and my relationship was on and off for four years. When Joe and I broke up for the final time the year before, Ranger and I started to see each other romantically. That was about nine months ago and we haven't looked back. We moved in together at the end of last September, discovered I was pregnant five weeks later, and got married just four weeks before in the middle of February. We'd had a whirlwind relationship that was four years in the making. He was both my lover as well as my best friend. I think he would say the same thing.

But I knew that Ranger wouldn't recover from his worry about me and my high blood pressure too easily – and I wouldn't be able to help him much other than by taking care of myself. As much as it pained me, I would have to take it easy and avoid work as much as possible – not for my sake as much as for his.

The technician called our name, and we entered the dim room. I lay down on the table and pulled up my top and down my pants so that the technician could squirt on some transmission gel. She spread it around with the transducer and looked at us. "Have you been here before?" she said.

I smiled worriedly. "Several times. In the past it was because there was some trauma to me and we wanted to know that the baby was alright. This time it is because I have high blood pressure and the doctor wants to confirm that the baby hasn't been affected."

The technical nodded. "I'll probably see you many more times then, over the remainder of your pregnancy. If you have high blood pressure, the doctor will want to make sure the baby is growing properly and, if the baby isn't, he might decide to induce labor early. When is your due date?"

"July fourth", I said.

"Let's have a little look then." She pressed and took measurements and moved the transducer around. Meanwhile, she had turned the monitor so that Ranger and I could see the baby. Tia looked happy in there, although she didn't appear to be enjoying the ultrasound too much. She kicked and waved her arms around a bit, then found her thumb and began to suck.

"Is she okay?" said Ranger. His voice was fearful. "She stopped moving."

The technician smiled. "She probably just went to sleep", she said. "Have you felt the baby move at all?"

Ranger smiled and his body relaxed. "I have", he said. "I started feeling her a month ago."

"That's a good sign", said the technician. "That was a little early for you to be feeling her, but your partner isn't a very large person and doesn't have a layer of fat covering her womb. I'm not surprised that you felt the baby much sooner than many men can feel it on their wives. If I remember correctly, you said that you had picked out names, hadn't you?"

"We had", I said. "Her name will be Tia Rose Manoso."

"That is a beautiful name. It reminds me of 'tea rose' which is, incidentally, my favorite flower."

I laughed. "We just got married, and we had a lot of tea roses in our wedding flowers just so that our daughter was represented at the wedding."

The technician smiled. "That's lovely." She finished taking the measurements that she needed. "I'll get the doctor for her review."

"Does everything look okay?" said Ranger.

"The baby looks healthy and whole, and I'll get the doctor to go over the results with you."

The technician left and a few minutes later the doctor came in. "Hi", she said. "Haven't you been here before?"

I groaned. "Many, many times."

"Why has your doctor ordered this ultrasound?"

"This time it is because my wife has high blood pressure", said Ranger, "and the doctor wants to know whether the baby is developing normally."

The doctor picked up the transducer and started to move it around. "The problem with gestational hypertension is that the baby can be starved of oxygen and nutrients and, if that happens, the baby will be underweight when born. The other problem, of course, is the impact on the mother and the potential for it to cause long-term problems with her health." She looked at the measurements and looked at the date the baby was due. "Your baby looks healthy and whole, and she is growing normally. She is on the small size of average, but that isn't necessarily indicative of a problem. She may just be a smaller baby. I'm sure, if your blood pressure doesn't come down, the doctor will send you for additional ultrasounds and, if that is the case, you'll be able to track her development over time."

"Is the baby's small size because of the high blood pressure?" said Ranger.

"I can't answer that", said the doctor. "Is the high blood pressure new?"

"As of Steph's appointment four weeks ago", said Ranger.

The doctor pulled up the results from the previous ultrasounds. "Looking at the size of the baby", she said, "your little one has always been on the small side of average. Do you have short people in your family?"

"Pretty well my whole family is short", said Ranger.

"That would explain it", said the doctor. "Some babies are just on the small side of average because they grow up to the small side of average. That isn't indicative of anything wrong. It just means that they are little people, and that's okay."

"Can you see a cause for worry?" I said.

The doctor looked at the image again. "I can't", she said. "To all intents and purposes, the baby looks happy in there and there is no cause for concern. In the meantime, rest as much as you can and do what you can to reduce your stress and drink lots of water. That will be the best way that you can help your baby out." She stood up, handed a tissue to Ranger to wipe off my tummy, and shook our hands. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you again in the near future. Take care of yourselves, and have a good day."

Ranger helped me off the examining table, held my coat so that I could put it on, and walked with me out of the lab. He held my hand tightly all the way to the car. When we got in and were on our way home, I said, "are you okay?"

Ranger had his poker face on. "No, not really", he said. "I'm worried about you, I'm worried about leaving you, but I can't get out of it." He paused. "I'm supposed to be gone for three nights and four days, but if I leave Sunday afternoon I could fire Randy and hire Bill on the Monday and talk to Bill Monday night, and then talk to the staff on Tuesday and fly home Tuesday night. That would mean that I would only have to be away from you for two nights and three days, and all day Monday you'll be doing the pee test and will have to stay around the apartment then anyway. "

"That's true", I said. "After all, it is only three days. What could go wrong in three days?"


	3. Chapter 3

Ranger walked into the apartment carrying sandwiches and containers of fruit salad for our lunch. "How's it going?" he asked.

"Good", I said. "I have been looking at different websites to source items for our apartment. I also called Miguel and Dirk, and told them that Miguel was in charge of the department and why. I have turned everything over to them, including the hiring of our new staff. I changed my email automatic reply to transfer everything over to Miguel, and I have sent an email to Justine telling her that Miguel and Dirk would be on the hiring committee while I was off on sick leave." Miguel and Dirk were my two research managers, and Justine was the HR representative who was in charge of recruitment and retention. "I am, as far as work goes, officially on sick leave now." I sighed.

Ranger looked relieved. "Cheer up, babe. You might be able to go to those interviews yet. If your blood pressure comes down, you'll be back at work on modified duties before you know it."

I sighed again. "How was your appointment with Gabriel?"

"Good. I feel a bit calmer about things."

"Because you realize that this isn't such a big deal?"

"No. Gestational hypertension is a very big deal. You could die from it, babe. However, I also realize that you are taking the steps necessary to protect yourself, and I can't ask you to do more than that. It made me realize how much you are doing, and has helped me accept the circumstances rather than fight against them. It's like if you are on a mission. You can't let yourself get caught in the weeds of worrying about what-ifs. You deal with what is in front of you and only what is in front of you. While I can do that quite easily when I am on a mission, it is harder for me not to worry about what-ifs when it is pertaining to you. On a mission I might want the outcome to be in my favor, but I'm not as invested in it and I don't let it bother me the same."

"When you're on a mission you are focused."

"When you are in danger and there is an obvious threat, I'm focused then as well. However, when the threat is as nebulous as high blood pressure, it is somewhat harder to be proactive and respond accordingly."

"I can see that. When we're in danger, we are constantly in fight or flight mode or, at least", I smiled, "you are in fight mode and I'm in flight mode." Ranger thought about smiling. "But however we do it, we are constantly responding. With high blood pressure though, you can't see any indication whether it is there or not. There is only a concept to fight against, and that makes things challenging."

"That's what Gabriel said. He said with not having the constant feedback as to whether we are doing a good job, it makes it harder to fight against. He said that, if you wanted to check in with him, he could take your blood pressure for you daily so that you could see if it was coming down and judge as to what you've done to decrease it so that you could take the same steps again."

"That was kind of him."

"I thought it might make things easier for you if you had that kind of feedback."

"Will it make things easier for you?"

"I don't know. If your blood pressure was coming down, then yes – it would make things a lot easier for me. But if he found out that your blood pressure was getting worse, it would make things harder for me as I would worry more. I'll leave it up to you."

"Thanks. I forget sometimes that Gabriel is a doctor."

Ranger thought about smiling. "I forget that sometimes myself. I told him that, and I think he was a bit insulted. He asked me how I thought of him. So I told him the truth. I thought of him as a nice person who was incredibly easy to talk to and someone I felt like I could tell him anything and it would be okay." He smiled. "Gabriel didn't seem to mind me not thinking of him as a doctor after that."

I laughed. "I can imagine that he wouldn't. It has to be good when your patient says that you are the kind of person that they can talk to. Being a therapist, that would be even more important."

"We talked a bit about my newest nightmare of you being stabbed to death and the baby being cut out of you. He agreed that the nightmare came from my over-the-top worry about your health mixed with the upset of walking into the suite and seeing your hand pinned to the desk with a knife."

"Did you have that nightmare again last night?"

"I've had that nightmare every night since your hand was injured."

"I'm sorry", I said.

"It's not your fault. You didn't ask to be pinned to the desk or stabbed through your hand. It just happened, and now I have to deal with the consequences."

I finished my sandwich and opened my container of fruit. I sighed as I ate my first mouthful. When I was first pregnant, I had a craving for raisin scones. Then came the craving for banana smoothies. Then came the craving for fruit. Then cheese. Now I was back to fruit again, and I assume that the craving for banana smoothies was next.

"I talked to Ella on the way up and told her that you were supposed to eat a low-salt, high-protein diet." Ella was our housekeeper and staff chef. When I first started seeing Ranger, she was in charge of cleaning Ranger's apartment , doing his laundry and cooking him breakfasts and dinners. She still cooked us dinner and did our laundry, but we have recently hired Vanessa to clean our apartment and Ranger has taken over cooking our breakfast. When we moved to the new building, Mellie would be taking over our laundry chores and Ranger and Mellie were going to share the responsibilities for cooking dinner. Ella would just have the responsibility of cooking for the staff, and she'd hired another chef to help her with the task. We were very glad to see her taking a bit of time to relax. She was in her early fifties, and she worked far too hard. She said she didn't mind, but Ranger and I worried about her. "She said she would cook our meals accordingly."

"I feel bad that she might be cooking us a separate meal than the meal that is prepared for the staff."

"Today she will cook us a separate meal, but after today she'll just make sure that there is a high-protein, low-sodium offering that she makes for the staff. I also told her that, when I leave on Sunday, you'll be at your parents for dinner and that I would be out on Monday night for dinner. I asked her to make you a separate dish for dinner on Monday night, and that you'd be sharing it with Amelia. I thought that I would make you muffins for breakfast that you could pull out of the freezer when I was gone, and boil a dozen hardboiled eggs to eat in the morning. She said that she'd get some 'no-salt' seasonings from the grocery store when she went today, so that she could still season your food."

"Ella has to be one of the nicest people around."

"She said that, when she has fully trained Jessica to help cook for the staff, she was looking forward to having us over for dinner. I told her that I'd like to have Luis and her over for dinner to our house as well – and that I could cook for them for a change. She seemed to like the idea."

"I'm looking forward to it. I often think of her like another mother. I like spending time with her and just yapping while she cooks, and I haven't been able to do that since she hired Jessica."

"She looks upon you and me especially as her children. I have always gotten along with her well, even when I was a kid. She has so much love to share and she mothered all the neighborhood children. She is a good person. So is Luis, her husband. I like them both immensely." Ella and Luis had only one son, a friend of Ranger's from when he was a child. Their son had joined the army as well, and he'd been killed in a firefight. Ranger had tried to save him, but hadn't been able to. Ranger and Ella and Luis had a lot of mutual respect before their son died, but afterwards they were grateful to Ranger for trying so hard to save their son. He had put himself in danger to carry their son to safety.

After Ranger retired from the army, he visited Ella and Luis frequently to talk about their son and reminisce about things that he had done. Ranger saw how much they were struggling. In danger of losing their house and too grief-stricken to work, he offered them a job and gave them a reason to get up in the morning. Essentially, he adopted them – and they adopted him. Their son may have died, but they both regarded Ranger as their adopted son. By extension, they regarded me as their adopted daughter. Personally, I found it nice to have an adopted mother on staff and close to us. I was glad that we were lightening her workload, and I looked forward to having the two of them over for dinner.

As long as I didn't have to cook. I had to be the world's worst cook and, if there was a way to burn water I would be sure of finding it. I had dreams about churning out masterpieces without a hair out of place. In reality, if I wanted to be able to eat edible food, I had three options: heat up something frozen from the grocery store; order in; or, rely on other people's cooking. In the past, before Ranger and I got together, I relied heavily on doggie bags from my mother and ordering in pizza or meatball subs interspersed with the odd frozen dinner.

However, Ranger had told me that he was going to teach me how to cook when he was cooking our dinners after we moved our residence over to the new building. I warned him that I was completely useless and teaching me how to cook was as impossible as teaching a dodo bird how to fly. Ranger's response was that dodo birds should have tried harder to learn how to fly and, if they had, they might not have become extinct.

He had already started teaching me a bit. I was up to the washing and tearing lettuce stages of making a salad, and I had found that it was different cooking with Ranger. He never got upset or told me that I was doing it wrong when I cut the green pepper and cucumber pieces a bit too large for the salad, and he calmed me down when I got upset about it. He didn't mind when I experimented and put strawberries in the salad. I had been craving strawberries, and Ranger told me that the salad looked good. He added slivered almonds and made a vinaigrette dressing to go with it, and somehow with his vinaigrette the salad tasted amazing. Since I grew up in a household where the theory was that fruit was fruit and salad was salad, and never the twain shall meet, having that sort of support was astounding to me.

So I was up to making salads, but anything more than that and I started having a panic attack. Ranger said that we'd work up to things slowly, as I felt comfortable with things. I hoped he realized that a snail would be speedy with the rate that I would feel comfortable.

But I could see his point. I should be able to cook something for our child in the event that Ranger and Amelia weren't there. As it was, the only thing that I would be able to make was a sandwich and, although our kids wouldn't starve, they might get tired of eating peanut butter and olive sandwiches. If they took after Ranger, they wouldn't even like them in the first place.

And I suspected that they would take after Ranger. I used to love peanut butter and olive sandwiches but, now that I was pregnant, the idea of them turned my stomach. Ranger said I was the only person he knew that had a pregnant woman's taste buds before I was pregnant, and the lack of them during pregnancy. He said that he couldn't understand it. Neither could I. Now that my favorite comfort food was out of the question, I'd had to develop other foods to take its place.

I was just glad that I had been craving things like banana smoothies, fruit and cheese. My sister had craved gravy with all her pregnancies. She would eat it poured over her corn flakes in the morning and use it as an ice cream topper for her dessert. Between meals, she would drink it as a snack. If she didn't have gravy at a meal, she would cry. She gained about eighty pounds with each of her pregnancies and I was always amazed that she didn't gain more. I was very thankful that I had only gained twelve pounds so far with mine. I was hoping I wouldn't gain more than the projected thirty pounds that my doctor recommended. As I had seen by my sister, it was too hard to lose afterwards.


	4. Chapter 4

Amelia arrived on Sunday morning, and Ranger made us French toast with some stale banana bread. It was awesome, and I decided that it was my favorite way to eat banana bread. That was saying something, since I greatly enjoyed banana bread any way that it came. With nuts, with chocolate chips, with blueberries, plain, it was all good. Eating banana bread reminded me of eating cake, and what could be better than eating cake for breakfast?

Amelia and I cleaned up the kitchen while Ranger packed his bag. I felt particularly sad for Ranger to be leaving. I didn't know why, but I felt like crying. As he carried his bag to the door, I think he saw the expression on my face. It didn't matter how much I was trying to hide it, Ranger had always been a master at reading my emotions. "Babe", he said as he gathered me in his arms. He pulled me in to him and kissed me on the top of head. "Take care of yourself", he said quietly. He molded my body with his hands as he looked up at Amelia. "Steph has been limited in her activities. She has been ordered to rest and has been put on sick leave from work. Under no circumstance is she allowed to work. She has been working on her design of the new apartment and is coming up with options for furniture, colors and finishes for each room. While you two are together, maybe you'd like to source out the room treatments and furniture for your room."

"You mean that I'll have a say in how my room is decorated?" said Amelia. She grinned.

"Of course", said Ranger. "After all, you'll be the person living in it. It needs to be something that you want to live in."

"I haven't had the chance to decorate my own room since I was about fifteen years old."

Ranger smiled. "Then it sounds like you are due."

Amelia smiled and turned around to go into the living room. I appreciated the privacy.

Ranger turned to me. "Take it easy, babe. And remember to rest. Don't forget that you have a yoga lesson on Tuesday afternoon, and tomorrow you are doing the pee test."

"I know."

He kissed my forehead. "Why do I feel like I should be staying at home? Something is telling me that it's a really bad idea to leave for a few days." He buried his nose in my hair and just took comfort in being with me. He sniffed my scent and rubbed his hands up and down my spine.

I took a deep breath and swallowed past the lump in my throat. "I'll be good. Hurry home", I said.

Ranger kissed me again and reluctantly let me go as he stepped back. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too."

"I love you."

"I love you too. So damn much", I said.

Ranger gave me another kiss, rubbed my belly, and picked up his bag. "I have to go. I'll be late."

"Have a safe flight", I said.

"Don't let Val make you cry again."

I smiled sadly. My sister Val and I had a history of being jealous of each other. For years, Val was secure in knowing that my parents favored her. She was the one who was the head cheerleader in high school, won a scholarship to college, graduated on the dean's list and married the perfect husband and had the two perfect kids. She had accomplished so much and had done everything right. I called her Saint Valerie because, seemingly without her trying, she had been blessed and everything went her way. Comparatively, I wasn't accepted to the cheerleading squad and was rejected from the baton twirling club. I didn't win any scholarships despite my trying and was just relieved to have been accepted into Douglass College. I felt lucky that I had graduated – it had been very close – and instead of marrying the perfect person I married the perfect jackass and divorced him three months later. I was in and out of jobs and living paycheck to paycheck.

But about four years ago Val and I switched positions. Val's perfect husband cheated on her with her perfect babysitter, and Val brought her perfect kids home to Trenton to lick her wounds. She met Albert Kloughn, a kind but largely ineffectual lawyer, and got pregnant out of wedlock. If that wasn't shocking enough, she did it again with Albert a few months after Lisa was born. We tricked her into marrying Albert, and she'd had Victoria. And then, after Victoria, she had Edmund, and Albert had finally agreed to have a vasectomy so that they wouldn't have any more.

However, while that was all happening I got a job as a bounty hunter and started going out on and off with Joe Morelli. He used to be known as the Italian Stallion, and his nickname was well earned. My job, while it didn't pay a lot, was interesting and rewarding, and I was earning enough to pay my bills. However, the last time I shot someone I didn't react well. I broke apart in a million pieces – and so did Joe. Ranger was the one to piece me back together. Joe and I broke up for the last time, and that's when my life really got better. Ranger offered me a job, largely so that he could keep his eye on me, and we started to go out together. Now, a year later, I was married to the most perfect man in the world with a baby on the way. We had a nice place to live, drove nice cars, and had money in the bank. My life, for once, was perfect.

I had thought that Val was happy. She had always wanted a large family, and she now had five children. She had always wanted a husband in an accomplished field, and now she was married to a lawyer. The fact that he was particularly useless as a lawyer didn't seem to matter to her. She had recently started as an office manager in a real estate office, and she seemed to be enjoying the ability to bring in money. So I had thought that she was happy.

But at Christmas, I learned that she was jealous of me and it was coming out in a very spiteful way. She told me that Ranger would never stick around for me and that I was a reject who didn't deserve the good things that were happening in my life. She said that she had done everything right and that I had done everything wrong, and she didn't understand why she was married to a bumbling lawyer who couldn't win a case while I was married to a smart and savvy businessman. She said that I didn't deserve Ranger and as soon as the baby was born he would file for a divorce and marry someone more worthy of him. Someone like her.

That was bad enough, and I was upset about it. I made excuses for her though – she was drunk and she was facing having to leave her kids at home each day so that she could go out to work, something that wasn't on her life plan, because her husband was so inept in his chosen profession. Ranger knew I was upset about what was said, but I refused to tell him the details and just fluffed it off as sibling rivalry. I was trying to overcome it, but I purposely didn't go out of my way to see her again.

However, then our wedding came four weeks ago, and Val again got drunk and again told me that I was useless and I didn't deserve Ranger. It was bad enough to say something like that on our wedding day, but what made it worse was that Ranger's thirteen-year old daughter overheard the comments. When Val left, I hid in the bathroom and tried to contain my tears and Julie, upset about what happened, told her dad what Val had said. Ranger came and rescued me and I cried for a while on his shoulder. He said that he might not ever forgive Val for saying those things in the first place, let alone picking our wedding day to say them. He had been furious with her ever since.

I have to admit that, no matter how happy I was that Ranger was supporting me, I was a bit worried about what he'd do. Ranger had a habit of getting back at those who have hurt the ones he loves. He was just sneaky about it, and the person who wronged us never knew that it was coming. When he found out that my ex-husband, that perfect asshole, had hit me once when I was married to him, Ranger looked into his life and realized that Dickie had been failing to declare a significant sum of money on his taxes. Ranger arranged for him to be charged with tax evasion. Dickie was recently sentenced to six years in prison. When Julie was stalked by that twenty-nine year old man and I looked into his life and found that he was here on diplomatic immunity, Ranger quietly arranged to have the man deported and charged for his drug trafficking and his pedophile actions in Honduras. I had no doubt that a shit storm was coming Val's way, and I wasn't sure if the family connection was enough to protect her. And the spiteful part of me wasn't sure if I wanted it to anyway.

"I won't", I said.

Ranger pulled me in for one last kiss, and then his watch alarm went off. "Damn, I have to go", he said. "I love you."

"I love you too. Drive carefully and have a good trip."

Ranger kissed me lightly on the lips and left the apartment.

I sighed as I heard the elevator doors close, and walked back into the living room where Amelia was sitting. "You okay?" she said.

"Yeah. I just have a really bad feeling that Ranger shouldn't have left, and I don't like it when I have bad feelings like that. I don't know if it is because of this high blood pressure or not, but I'm more worried than I think I have ever been when Ranger has had to leave."

"He's going to Little Rock?"

"We bought a security company a month ago with offices in Boston, Nashville, Raleigh, Atlanta and Little Rock. All the Executive Directors were good in their role, and Ranger is going to keep them – except for the Executive Director in Little Rock. He is full of himself and doesn't seem to be a team player. However, Ranger has a friend in Little Rock who is looking for work. Ranger talked to him, and Bill is willing to take over the directorship. Ranger is going down to fire the old director and hire Bill in his stead and, while he is there, meet with the office staff and overview the new corporate mandate and mission statement and organizational chart. He is then planning on doing a personal meet and greet with everyone, working with each of the units within the branch to ensure that they are working well, and address any problems or concerns that staff may have. He was originally going down for three nights and four days, but has reduced it to two nights and three days. Like me, he doesn't have a good feeling about being away right now."

"What is happening with your health? After all, something must be happening for Ranger to tell me so firmly that you aren't allowed to work."

"I have high blood pressure, and my doctor wants me to take time off to try to get it under control before he prescribes medication. There is some concern that the baby could be affected by the hypertension."

"Could the baby or you die if you don't take care of things?"

"It's a possibility."

"So you really have to take care of yourself."

"Yes. I think that's why Ranger is so concerned about leaving me."

"Why are you concerned that he has left you?"

"I don't know, but I will be very happy when he is back again."

Amelia looked at me, and I think she could read the upset on my face. She decided to change the subject. "What are your plans for the next few days?"

I smiled. "We are going to my parents for dinner tonight. I'll apologize in advance for them. My grandmother lives with my parents, and she is often insensitive and invasive in her comments and questions. She should be better with you, but she put Ranger through the wringer when he went with me to dinner the first time. Luckily, he rolls with the punches well. When my sister's husband went the first time, my grandmother asked him for penis size and shape and, when he wouldn't tell her, she considered this proof that he had a small wanger and announced it to the table at dinner. Unfortunately, my then-eight and ten-year old nieces didn't understand what she had meant and asked for an explanation, which my grandmother proceeded to give them. My mother was horrified and my father told my mother to control my grandmother, at which point my mother said that was impossible and my grandmother took offense to the need for being controlled. My grandmother will enjoy meeting you. You're fresh meat."

"Oh boy."

"Exactly."


	5. Chapter 5

I drove to my parents. "The timing of getting to my parents is important", I said. "Dinner is served precisely at six. Not six-oh-one. Not five-fifty-nine. Six on the dot. It is better to show up half an hour early so that you have time for a bit of a visit before dinner. Then, after dinner, I help clean up the kitchen before leaving. Two hours and we're out of there.

"My father, besides the time when we are actually consuming the food, will spend his time in his recliner in front of the television, watching sports but also surreptitiously listening to the conversation in the kitchen so that he doesn't miss anything. My mother and grandmother spend most of their lives in the kitchen. My family doesn't know of the high blood pressure, and I'd like to keep it that way. My mom is a worrier and my grandmother is a sensationalist. If my grandmother knew, she'd tell everyone in the neighborhood that I almost had a stroke or, if she doesn't get enough interest in that story, she'll tell everyone that I did have a stroke but that I'm fine now. Meanwhile, my mom will cry and get frustrated with my grandmother. Even my dad will worry."

"Do you have siblings?"

"Just one sister, but our relationship was recently soured when I found out that she was extremely jealous of the relationship that I have with Ranger. Don't get me wrong. I love her and I care about her. I'm just having trouble handling all the pot shots that are happening recently and because of that don't want to spend time with her."

"Will this be the first time that you have seen her since the wedding?"

"I'm hoping she's not at dinner tonight, but I don't have high hopes. My mother likes to have everyone over and have us acting like a big happy family, and Val and her family usually come for dinner on Sundays."

"Okay, so beware of your sister and try to avoid your grandmother. Anything else?"

"I'm going to introduce you as the person we have selected to be our nanny, and tell them that you are living with me while Ranger is gone to help me develop a decorating plan. I'm not going to tell them that you are also a trained bodyguard. It would again get my mother worried and would incite my grandmother's interest, and I don't think you want a conversation with my grandmother about what kind of gun you carry or how many people you have shot."

"She would actually ask that?"

"She has asked Ranger many times. He says that he can't count that high, which gets Grandma even more excited and enthused. With me she knows that I have killed people, and she wants me to get teardrops tattooed under my eyes to reflect this fact."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Don't laugh at Albert."

"Who's he?"

"Val's husband. He's incapable of teasing, so take everything that he says as him meaning it."

"Okay. Take Albert seriously. Is that it?"

"Yeah. I think so. Ranger should be paying you danger pay for this one."

"It can't be that bad, can it?"

I laughed as I pulled up at the curb behind my sister's minivan. "My sister, Val, and her husband and the five kids are all here. Are you ready to enter bedlam?"

"If I can face down an enemy soldier, I can face down this."

"That's the spirit", I said. I turned off the car and locked the doors after us.

My parents live in a three-bedroom duplex in the Burg, an established neighborhood that was the melting pot of Trenton. It was a close, hardworking community in which residents lived for gossip and the weekend. My parents' house was a pale yellow house with a red door. It used to be mustard yellow and dirt brown, and mixed with the lime green house next door it had looked like a train wreck. However, after an unfortunate incident with one of my skips, my parents had needed to repaint the house. They had taken it much better than I had. My mother had said that she had always wanted a yellow house and a red door, and she had quickly had taken advantage of the graffiti. I, however, wasn't sure if I liked the change. While the pale yellow and lime green looked Easter-like and almost pretty, the mustard yellow and brown had always been my parents' house colors, and I had always taken comfort in the sameness of my parents' house.

The house was small but loving. On the main floor there was a living room, a dining room and a kitchen all shotgunned together in a row. A television dominated the living room, a large table dominated the dining room, and a small four-seater dominated the kitchen. On the second floor were three small bedrooms and a small bathroom that everyone fought over each morning. It was where I had grown up and would always represent home to me.

When we walked up the steps to the house, I could hear the three younger kids crying, Mary Alice yelling at them to shut the fuck up, my sister yelling at Mary Alice to watch her language, and my father turning up the television because he couldn't hear it over the crying and the screaming. I paused on the doorstep, trying to decide if I should subject Amelia to the insanity, and trying to decide if I wanted to subject myself to it as well.

Just then, my mother hustled to the front door and opened it, and I saw my method of escape disappearing in front of me. "Leave, and you'll never have pineapple upside-down cake again", she said. That was a serious threat, and my mother knew it. Pineapple upside-down cake was my favorite food of all time, and my mother had learned early in life that I would do almost anything for it. "I made some for dessert today."

I looked at the house, then my mother, then the house again. "With or without whipped cream?"

"I bought a new can of whipped cream today, just for you."

"Well, damn."

"I'll give you the leftovers to take home."

I sighed. "I guess we're going in."

My mother breathed a sigh of relief.

"What's going on?"

"Edmund is cutting his first tooth so he's grumpy. Victoria has a cold so she's grumpy, Lisa is dropping her nap so she's grumpy, Angie is having trouble concentrating on her homework because of the noise so she's grumpy, and Mary Alice was told by her teacher that it was impossible for her to be a horse so she's grumpy." For years now, Mary Alice had thought that she was a horse. For Christmas, I took Mary Alice to a stable and let her have her first horseback riding lesson. After her lesson, I took her out for lunch. She had hardly stopped talking about it since, and had repeatedly begged her mother for weekly lessons. I think that was something else that Val was angry about. Mary Alice said that her horseback riding lesson was the best present she had ever had, and Val couldn't afford to give weekly lessons to her.

I looked around the confusion. "Where's Albert?" I said to my mother in a loud voice. I needed to yell to be heard over the three crying babies.

"He's sleeping", said Val. She sounded resentful. "I have looked after the kids day in and day out while he is at work, and now that I'm working he struggles to look after the kids for two days in a row."

"Not all days are good days when you are looking after kids", I said. "You know that." I picked up Victoria, the toddler who was the closest to me, and jiggled her around in my arms. She buried her wet face in my shoulder and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Amelia grabbed a tissue out of her pocket and wiped Lisa's face dry. She got down on her haunches and talked quietly to her for a moment, and Lisa quit crying so that she could hear Amelia talking. Pretty soon, she was telling Amelia all about her favorite television show.

"We need Ranger here", said my mother. "He would be able to quiet Edmund." Ranger seemed to have the magic touch with Edmund. I don't know how he did it, but whenever Edmund was crying, Ranger was able to settle him. He was the only person that seemed to be able to. Ranger was even better than Val at settling her son, and I think that upset Val even more.

"He had to go to Little Rock on business."

"He's already running away from you, is he?" said Val as she bounced Edmund in her arms. "I told you that he wouldn't last. Nobody who looks that good has any staying power."

I gritted my teeth. "Val, I have only been married for a month. Do you think you could stop predicting my divorce?"

"You'll see", she said.

"Val, is your marriage okay? I mean, you are awfully negative about the state of matrimony."

"My marriage is doing just fine, but my husband isn't as good looking as yours, or as rich, or as successful. I don't live in a fancy house. I married my husband and now my name is Valerie Kloughn. I sound like someone who works in a circus." She sobbed once. Edmund grabbed a hank of her hair and yanked hard, and Val winced.

My grandmother walked down the stairs. "Don't go to the bathroom for a while. Somebody laid a fat one up there, and there isn't any air freshener in the can."

"Did you open the window?" said my mother.

"I couldn't reach", said Grandma. "For some reason, I seem to be getting shorter. It's too cold anyway."

"Do you want me to go open the window?" I said.

My mom looked at Victoria, who had fallen asleep in my arms. She looked at Lisa, who Amelia had soothed and was now playing with a doll. "Stay here. I'll do it", she said.

Amelia walked over to Val. "May I? You look like you need a break."

Val handed over her son. "Good luck. Albert wanted a boy, so we had to keep trying. Now Albert has the boy, but he still doesn't want a vasectomy."

"I thought he already had the snip done", I said.

"No, he's been stalling. He said that he's afraid he'll be singing soprano for the rest of his life."

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"I've cut him off sex, but so far it isn't working. Every night he makes some moves and every night I have to turn him down. It's hard. Doesn't he understand that I have needs too?"

"I'm sure he does", I said.

"Of course, it's not all bad. I'm getting more sleep at night."

"That's good, isn't it? I mean, at night I'm tired."

"If I was married to Ranger, I would never be too tired."

Edmund stopped crying, and Val looked at Amelia in surprise. Amelia had Edmund over at the window and was pointing out various things to him. He was looking out the window in fascinated wonder.

"How did you do that?" said Val. "He has been particularly fussy around strangers lately, and hasn't gone to anyone other than Albert, me, Mom or Ranger."

"Amelia seems to have the magic touch, just like Ranger", I said. I smiled. I was looking forward to telling Ranger how good she was with the babies.

"Thank God", said my father.

"Finally", said Angie. I smiled down at her. While I had taken Mary Alice to the stables, I had taken Angie to a book reading by one of her favorite authors at the book store before taking her out for lunch, and had bought her a signed copy of the book. She said it was one of her most prized possessions. Always serene, she had been so excited about the book she had been hopping in her seat during lunch and she had read the book in its entirety by the end of the next day.

I liked all my nieces and my nephew, but I knew Angie and Mary Alice the best, simply because they were the oldest. Up until about four years ago, I didn't know them well at all. Val had lived in California. I wished that she'd go back to California, especially with her current attitude.

"How do you know Steph?" said Grandma to Amelia.

"Steph and Ranger have actually hired me to become their nanny", said Amelia. "I'm preparing for it by taking an early childhood course in college. It will take me a couple of years, but I should have my certification by the time the baby can talk. I also just took a first aid course specializing in infant and child care so that I'm prepared that way as well."

"I can't believe that Steph has the choice to stay home with her babies but still chooses to go out to work", said Val. "I mean, what kind of mother is that?"

I sucked in a breath. I didn't understand why Val had such a hatred for me lately. Was jealousy for my life with Ranger the only reason?

"A happy one?" said Amelia. "Steph does amazing things in her job, and her department is growing by leaps and bounds. Her staff feel empowered and respected for their abilities. Every single person at Rangeman is happy that she has decided to continue to work."

I could see that my grandmother was gearing up to ask Amelia how she knew that, so I decided to head the questions off and said, "Mellie is planning on living with us when the baby is born. With Ranger away for a few days, Mellie and I are planning out her new room and picking the special features she wants, colors, and furniture."

The timer buzzed on the oven, and my mother hustled into the kitchen. She took a tray out of the oven and turned to Val. "It's time to get Albert up", she said. "Dinner is ready."


	6. Chapter 6

Val went to the base of the stairs. "ALBERT!" she said.

My father winced at the loud screech and walked into the kitchen to wash his hands. I herded the children upstairs to wash their hands, and at the same time knocked on the guest room door. "Hey, Albert", I said.

Albert sat up and blearily opened his eyes. "Hey, Steph, when did you get here?"

I smiled at him. "About half an hour ago. Dinner is ready."

"That's great. I love cabbage rolls."

My stomach dropped. There are few foods in life that I hated as much as cabbage rolls. I had a theory. Cabbage, cooked, was slimy and gross. Cabbage wasn't supposed to be limp. It was supposed to be crisp, like in coleslaw. Tomato sauce was supposed to be served on pasta. It wasn't supposed to be served on cabbage. And don't even get me started on the tomato sauce on the rice in the filling.

There were few things that I hated more than cabbage rolls. In fact, the only thing that I hated more was sauerkraut and, although not cooked, it was comprised of limp cabbage as well. Luckily, my father didn't like sauerkraut either, so it wasn't a food I was subjected to often.

I had told my mother when Ranger and I first started dating that Ranger didn't like cabbage rolls. While she didn't pay attention when I said that I didn't like them, she wouldn't serve them to Ranger. She had a habit of catering to the sons-in-law, just in the effort to make sure that they liked her. She thought it was strange that he didn't like them just as much as my ex-boyfriend didn't like them, but she was willing to go with it. Now that Ranger wasn't there for dinner, I guess she thought it was fair game and she could cook that odious food.

"I love cabbage rolls, don't you?" said Albert. "They have to be one of my most favorite meals. Mom hasn't made them for a while."

"Fancy that", I said faintly.

He got up and followed me to the bathroom to wash his hands, and followed me again down to the dining room table. He sat down and, copying my father, grasped a fork and a knife in his hands, ready to eat as soon as my mother finished saying grace. My mother carried the cabbage rolls to the table and my grandmother carried out a salad and bread as Amelia and I settled the children in their booster seats. Edmund had fallen asleep and Amelia had already placed him in his playpen for a nap. I was pleased. With Edmund asleep, we would be getting a good chance to visit. Of course, I wouldn't be able to avoid eating dinner by looking after him either.

My mother said grace before we started dishing up the food. The cabbage roll pan was hot and we were unable to move it around the table. Mom started the dishing up with my father, and my grandmother took a serving of salad and passed the bowl.

My father and I ate basically the opposite dinner. While he regarded salad as rabbit food, he had a particular fondness for cabbage rolls and my mother put two on his plate. Meanwhile, I dished up a particularly large bowl of salad for myself, but asked my mother for a half portion of cabbage rolls. "I have to watch my weight", I said.

"Nonsense", said my mother. "There isn't anything in cabbage rolls that could make you fat, and you have to feed the baby." She dished me up two whole cabbage rolls. "Val suggested this for dinner. We haven't had it for a long time. And I figured, why not? Ranger isn't here. I know he dislikes them immensely."

I looked at the food in loathing, and then looked at Val. She smirked at me. Apparently she knew of my hatred for cabbage rolls.

"I love cabbage rolls", said Albert. "Don't you, Val? You haven't made me cabbage rolls in a long time. I mean, I love your cooking. You are the best cook in the world. But you haven't made me cabbage rolls in a long time." He stopped and realized what he'd said, and then turned to my mother. "Not that your cooking isn't good, Mom. You are also a great cook. I can see where Val gets it from. You must have taught Val everything she knows."

"Thank you, Albert", said my mother.

"And you", said Albert to my grandmother. "You must have taught your daughter and granddaughter everything they know. You are a good chef as well." My grandmother smiled. "It's like they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

"They also say that there is a rotten apple in every bushel", said Val. "Now that you are married, are you planning on learning how to cook?" she said to me. "If you are, I'll have to warn Ranger to install sprinklers in his new apartment." She laughed as she turned to Amelia. "I hope you can cook, because Steph is particularly useless in the kitchen. I mean, she can't even toast bread without it burning, and anything beyond making a sandwich is impossible for her. Mom has tried to teach her several times, but she is a failure. After the fourth kitchen fire, I could understand why Mom refused to teach her any longer."

I looked down at the table, tears in my eyes, as I counseled myself to not let her get to me.

"I'm sure that Steph could cook if she wanted to", said my mother. "She's just never wanted to learn enough. She's always had people to cook for her."

I smiled. "I can cook. I can follow the directions on a frozen lasagna any day."

Albert took a huge bite of his cabbage roll. Sauce dribbled down his chin as he said, "I like lasagna. I even like the frozen ones, although there is nothing like Val's lasagna. She makes the best lasagna in the whole world." He saw my mother looking at him. "Not as good as your lasagna", he said. "Your lasagna is out of this world." Val glared at him. "I mean", he said as he pulled at the neckline of his shirt, "you both have fabulous lasagnas." He turned to Amelia. "Did I tell you that both Val and her mother are good cooks?"

"Ranger likes to cook as well, doesn't he?" said my mother.

"He does", I said. "His parents are good chefs, and they taught all their kids how to cook. Ranger learned from an early age on, and he still enjoys cooking. He said that he finds it relaxing." I ate my salad and stared at my cabbage rolls.

My phone rang, and I gratefully popped up to get it. "Hi, Joe", I said as I answered. I looked over at Amelia, and she flushed.

"Hey. I have a huge favor to ask", he said.

"What's that?" I walked into the living room and sat on the sofa.

"I have arrested Simon Diggory for body snatching. I have several newly deceased people who have been dug up and stolen, and Simon is our best suspect. He said that he didn't do it though, and he said that he will only talk to you about it. Apparently he trusts you but doesn't trust the police. Can you come out and talk to him?"

"Right now?"

"Is that a problem? I have him in an interrogation room."

"Thank God", I said in a heartfelt whisper.

"Why?"

"I'm at my parents', and we're having cabbage rolls for dinner."

Morelli laughed. As my ex-boyfriend and now best friend after Ranger, he was well familiar with my hatred of cabbage rolls. Before I manufactured Ranger's hatred for cabbage rolls, I had told my mother that Joe had hated them. Like my mother's desire to get into Ranger's good books, she had also wanted to get into Joe's.

"I'll take you out to Pino's for dinner", he said. Pino's was a local Italian eatery that Joe and I had frequented often when we were going out together. We had been so often that we had memorized the menu and knew all the waiting staff by name.

"Take Simon with us and you have a deal."

"Take Simon?"

"Simon doesn't trust cops, and he's not going to talk in an interrogation room. He will, however, talk over a good meal. Knowing Simon, he probably hasn't had a good meal in a long time."

"He's our best suspect."

"No, he isn't. Simon steals jewelry. He steals clothes. He does not steal bodies."

"Okay. He looks scared."

"I'll meet you at Pino's in fifteen minutes."

"Deal."

I hung up the phone and walked back into the dining room. "I'm sorry to interrupt dinner, Mom, but Amelia and I have to go and help Joe with a witness."

"Will you be back? You didn't touch your cabbage rolls."

"Thanks anyway, but this will go fairly long."

Amelia took a last bite of her cabbage rolls and stood. "Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Plum", she said.

"Please, call me Helen", said my mother. "If you are going to be babysitting Steph's kids, I think we should be on a first-name basis."

Amelia smiled.

I kissed my mother and grandmother and father on the tops of their heads, walked to the door and, as I put on my boots, Edmund woke up and started to cry. "Oh, sh…sugar", said my sister as we walked out the door.

We got in the car. "I'm sorry", I said. "That had to be the dinner from hell for you."

Amelia laughed. "It was certainly interesting. It made me appreciate my aunt and uncle more." Amelia's parents had died when she was a teenager, and her aunt and uncle took her in. However, they had never wanted to be parents and resented the fact that they had become ones, and they took it out on Amelia. Treating her with neglect and indifference, they drove her into enlisting in the army in an effort to get away from them. Now, fifteen years later, she had no clue as to whether they were alive or dead – and neither did she care. She had washed her hands of them just as much as they had washed their hands of her.

"Are you hungry?" she said. "Your mother was right. All you ate for dinner was salad."

I smiled. "There are few foods I hate as much as cabbage rolls. I don't think cabbage should be limp when it is served. It always reminds me of cabbage that has gone bad. I also think there is an unwritten rule that Polish people seem to have not learned, that says that tomatoes and cabbage should not be served together. The only food more disgusting than cabbage rolls is sauerkraut."

"I don't mind cabbage rolls."

"I thought I had gotten around it by telling my mother that Ranger hated cabbage rolls. Apparently she has just decided that it would be okay to only serve them when he isn't there."

"Doesn't your mother know of your hatred for cabbage rolls?"

"She conveniently forgets about it. Besides, she is so focused on the fact that cabbage rolls are healthy, and that they are one of my father's favorite foods, that she doesn't pay attention to whether I like them or not."

"Does your sister know you don't like them? After all, she had requested them for dinner."

"I know. She did that precisely because she knew I didn't like them."

"Wow. There is no love lost between your sister and yourself, is there?"

"My sister used to be a good sister. It's just since I started seeing Ranger that she became vindictive and petty. I don't know what her problem is, but I think it has something to do with me being with Ranger. I mean, I know that she used to have a crush on Ranger. She had wanted me to set her up with Ranger before she settled down with Albert. Her comment to me at the time was that Ranger was a man and Albert was a teddy bear. I had thought, however, that she was no longer infatuated with him. After all, she's married now and has five children – three with Albert and two with her first husband. That's the only thing that I can think of though. Ever since I got engaged to Ranger, she's been brutal in her comments. Everything said is designed to make me feel bad about myself and to point out her comparative perfection. She particularly likes to make me feel like a bad mother for wanting to work outside the home."

"I noticed. However, you provide a valuable service to society with your work and, personally, I don't think you have to be with your child 24/7 to be a good mother. Tia will love you, because you will love Tia – and perhaps, with having adult time, you will be able to enjoy her even more than if you were with her constantly."

"Val is like a supermom. She never needs time away from her kids."

"I don't know about that", said Amelia. "I see her as someone who is struggling to cope and keep her head above water. I think having five children was too much for her. She didn't know how to soothe her kids when they were upset, and you could see by her kids that it didn't take much to soothe them. Your sister should have been able to do that with ease."

"I don't know if I could. I don't know how good a mother I will be."

Amelia smiled. "Don't worry about it. You'll be a good mother simply because you care so much. Your child will be well-loved and well-looked after. Who looks after your sister's kids when she is at work?"

"Three days a week my mother and grandmother look after the kids, and the other two days Albert looks after the kids."

"So your mother and grandmother are part of your sister's immediate family. You also will have the babysitter as part of your immediate family. I will be living with you and eating with you, and to all intents and purposes I will be family to your baby just as much as your mother and grandmother are family to your nieces and nephew. There is little difference."

"It just makes me feel bad, makes me feel like a failure, for wanting to go out to work. Yet, at the same time, I know that I would resent Tia if I was home full-time with her."

"You will love Tia with all your heart. Just because you're an extrovert that loves being with a variety of people and you need mental stimulation more than being home with Tia will allow doesn't mean that you are a bad mother. The difference is that, when you are home with her, you will be happier and more dedicated to her, and she will blossom under your focused attention."

"What about you? Will you find it hard not having adult company to interact with?"

"First of all, I'm more of an introvert who is quite happy being alone most of the time. However, I've been meaning to talk to you about my schedule when I'm home with Tia. I have been greatly enjoying my early childhood education courses and especially enjoying the psychology segments and learning how kids think and learn. I was wondering whether you and Ranger would mind me taking courses at night. I thought it might be fun to try to get my degree, maybe in psychology, after I finish my early childhood education degree. I had never thought that I would ever get the chance to go to college, but getting a degree like that would be fun, I think. It would mean that the evenings I have classes I wouldn't be able to look after Tia though."

I smiled. "That sounds like a wonderful idea. I was also wondering if you'd like to join some mother-baby groups, whether that was a baby swim class or a coffee group or whatever. Looking after our baby has to work for you just as much as it has to work for us, and I suspect that you will appreciate having that regular adult time." I parked in Pino's lot and looked around. Morelli wasn't there yet. "It would be good for the baby to interact with other children as well."

Amelia smiled. "Thank you for being so open to various suggestions."

"It's like as you said. A happy caregiver makes a happier baby."


	7. Chapter 7

Pino's was busy, and we finally found a booth near the rear. I handed a menu to Amelia, and no sooner had Amelia started to look at the food options when Joe walked to the back of the restaurant with Simon. Simon sat beside Amelia and Joe sat beside me, and when Morelli sat down he kissed me on the cheek. "How are you?" he said.

"Good."

"How's the baby?"

"Kicking up a storm."

"Where's Ranger?"

"He's in Little Rock on business. He won't be home for a couple of days."

"You're with Ranger?" said Simon.

"He's the father of my baby", I said.

Simon smiled and nodded. "That's good", he said.

"Why's that, Simon?"

"No matter what, Ranger will protect you, and he's the best protector around. He doesn't take shit from anyone. And the people that I am going to tell you about are dangerous."

"I'd like to hear about them", I said, "but the waitress will be coming soon and you might want to decide on what you want to order."

Simon carefully perused the menu before choosing a personal pizza. I chose a meatball sub with a salad. Joe looked at me in surprise. "You're not having fries?" he said.

"I like my fries loaded with salt", I said, "and I have been told not to eat salt right now."

"Why's that?"

"I have high blood pressure. The doctor has put me on sick leave for the next two weeks."

"So I shouldn't be bothering you with this?"

"Trust me, this is less stressful than eating cabbage rolls with my family. Val has, for some reason, developed a hatred for me lately and spends a lot of time trying to run me down and make me feel bad about myself."

"The jealousy between the two of you has always been high. Personally, I think that Val feels bad about her life and where she is in it, and the only thing that she is proud of, that she has done according to her life plan, is have kids and be a homemaker. Now that you are having a child and are building a mansion-sized home, she feels that you are showing her up. She's not used to sharing the pedestal and she's not happy to have to do it now."

"But does she have to be so nasty about it?"

"She's always been nasty about things. Remember when you were kids and you jumped off the roof? She didn't have the guts to do it, so she told everybody about you jumping into the pile of doggie doo-doo. When the baton got away from you, she took great delight in telling everyone about it flying into the tuba. When you were babysitting, she enjoyed telling of the time you thought you had lost the child and the kid was hiding in the closet the whole time. But the true problem is that people love you. People like to be with you and they seek you out. People overlook bad things happening to you and refuse to see it as anything more than an anecdote simply because they like you so much and are willing to be understanding. Don't pay attention to Val. Just because you have the life that she had always wanted doesn't mean that you have to take her crap. She's just being catty."

I blew out an unhappy breath. "Thanks, Joe", I said.

Joe put an arm around me and snugged me into his side. He kissed the side of my head. "Any time, cupcake."

The waitress came and we gave our orders and, when she had left again, I turned to Simon. "What's going on?" I asked.

Simon lowered his voice. "You're the only one I trust", he said. "You've always done right by me. I may not want to go into jail when you are trying to capture me, but when you capture me you always buy me a meal before taking me in to be rebooked."

I smiled. "It's the least that I can do, Simon. I would hate to think that you were hungry when you were waiting for a new trial date."

Joe harrumphed beside me.

"What's going on?" I said.

"I've been living in fear."

"You have? Why?"

He looked worriedly at Joe, and I hastened to reassure him. "Joe isn't going to arrest you today. He just wants to know what you know."

"Don't promise something that I might not be able to deliver on", said Morelli. I glared at him. "Okay, I won't arrest you today, but later on, I might."

"I was out at the cemetery doing some work, if you know what I mean. Ollie Crumpton was buried that morning, and my contact at the funeral home told me that Ollie was loaded and he was buried with a gold ring, three gold necklaces and a Rolex."

"Good haul."

"That's what I thought. I thought that it would feed my kids for a month if I could sell it at the right price. So Ollie had been buried that afternoon, and it is easier to dig up coffins when the grave is fresh. The rain wouldn't have tamped the dirt down and made it heavy."

"What night was this?"

"Last Thursday. So I go to the grave with my shovel, and there are two men already digging it up. I was furious. I was the only grave robber in Trenton before, and I wasn't happy that someone was infringing on my territory. I support my family with what I can dig up."

"What did the people want?"

"I hid and watched them, as I wanted to see if there was something left for me to steal after they left. After all, people don't often think of all the sources of money in a body. People think of the rings, for example, but they often don't think of the gold fillings in teeth."

"I can see why people often miss that", I said.

"So I watched them, but instead of taking the rings and necklaces they took the whole body."

"What did you do?"

"I followed them from the graveyard to a van. It was black. I tried to get to my car in time to follow them, but by the time I got back to where they'd been, their van was gone."

"Had you seen them before?"

"Not that I know of, but I didn't get a clear view of them. It was dark on Thursday night and there was no moon."

"Can you provide any sort of physical description for me? Tall, short, Caucasian, Black, Asian, etcetera?"

"One was tall and Caucasian. The other was short and black and walked with a limp when he was carrying the body. I didn't notice a limp beforehand, but I might have just missed it because I didn't see him do anything other than stand around and dig up the body. They both were whistling softly and happily. They were disrespectful of the body. I may steal things from the dead, but I am never disrespectful of the body. I don't sing when I am relieving the dead of their possessions."

"You take out the teeth that have gold fillings in them, and you break bones in order to get the rings off the fingers of the deceased."

"Yes, but I always say a Hail Mary before I take the jewelry, and I ask for forgiveness after I have done the deed."

Joe shook his head.

"So these two men took the body to a van and left the graveyard. Do you know what kind of van?"

"A big dark one. Like one that would be able to take a wheelchair."

"Okay, so they took the body to a van that looked like one of the tall ones that had the ability to take a wheelchair."

"Yes, in a black or dark blue or dark gray. Something dark, anyway."

"And then they took off, and you have no idea where they went."

"That's right. But I got a license plate." He told me it as Joe wrote it down and sent an email to the station asking for a search.

"That's good, Simon. What do you think that they want with the body?"

"I don't know, but there were three bodies in the van when they put Ollie in the back."

"So why do you think that they are dangerous?"

"They were stealing bodies. They have to be up to no good."


	8. Chapter 8

We finished our meal, and Simon ordered a dessert to go. I assumed that it was to share with his many kids, and I think Morelli was thinking the same thing because he ordered three helpings of it. Simon beamed when it was brought to the table in a polystyrene 'to-go' container, and I think he thanked Joe five times before we left the restaurant.

As we walked out to the car, Simon said, "do you want me to call you if I see the men again?"

Joe and I nodded. "I'm going to be honest with you, Simon", I said. "Things aren't looking good for you. Because of your extra-curricular nightly activities, you are at the top of the suspect list. However, if you can identify the body snatchers or even just call us in time for us to see them, that will go a long way to proving your innocence. If we really want to knock you off the suspect list, we have to put someone else at the top of it."

Simon nodded. "I'll keep an eye out. Tomorrow, I've heard Henrietta Adderly is being buried wearing a pearl necklace."

"Then I wish you luck. Do you have my number?" I said.

"No."

I asked for Simon's phone, and I inputted my cell number in his contacts. "If you see anything at all that you want to report, give me a call. It doesn't matter what time of the day, just call me."

Simon smiled. "You always were the nicest bounty hunter to work with", he said. "I purposely pick your bonding agent just so that you pick me up when I skip bail."

"Why do you skip bail, anyway?"

"The babies have to be fed."

I nodded. I understood completely. Simon had taken a number of small jobs in his life, but he never seemed to hold onto them for long. He barely scraped together enough money to pay for his family's food and lodgings, and I had often suspected that although he was keeping a roof over their heads, there was little money for food. Simon always seemed to allow himself to be caught when he was his hungriest and, because his bond was always low, the fifteen percent that he paid Vinnie was always less than the price of a good meal. The last time I took him in, instead of taking him out for lunch I took him to the grocery store and we bought a bagful of canned goods. Simon seemed to appreciate that even more than me taking him out for food. I always lost money when I took Simon in, but I was assured that I was doing the right thing. Simon was always so pathetically grateful for the help.

Although, to be honest, I never couched it as me offering Simon and his family help. I couched it as a sort of consolation prize, an apology for taking him in and stopping him from bringing home the bacon – or the gold rings. I also tried to bring him in when there were no good funerals, and I think that he appreciated that as well. I was just glad that Simon was a clean criminal. With the hopelessness of his living situation, it would have been understandable for him to turn to drugs or alcohol.

Amelia and I got in our car and, as we pulled away from the curb, we saw Morelli and Simon get in Morelli's car. They followed us away from Pino's but, whereas we went home to Rangeman, Joe and Simon went to Simon's home. "Simon seemed hungry", said Amelia. "Having been hungry myself recently, I recognized the signs."

"The eating slowly to try to eke it out, the eating everything, the way his eyes lit up when the food was brought to the table?"

"Yes."

"I have a lot of skips like that. Sometimes the decision to steal is based on the understanding that, if they didn't steal, they would starve. It's sad to see people reduced to that sort of decision." I paused. "Take for example, you. You are a good person that, because of the circumstances you were in, were forced to steal. If we had a better social network, people wouldn't be reduced to such dire decisions. But people are so afraid that others will take advantage of help if it is offered. People's attitude is that, 'I have had to work hard to get to where I am, so why should I help others?' It's so wrong. Yes, there will be the odd person who will take advantage of the help. But isn't it better to help many than spoil it because of the few? Isn't it better to help others achieve independence? Most people have help along the way, whether it is from their family or their friends. But some people don't have anyone who is in a position to help, and those are the people that we need to help. Take again, for example, you. Your parents have passed on and are therefore not able to help. You don't have any siblings who are able to help."

"You helped me."

"No. All Rangeman did was open a door. Everything that has happened to you has been because of you and what you can do."

"You've adopted me into your family and have given me a purpose in my life again."

"You did that through your hard work and positive attitude and honorable way of conducting yourself. You're a nice person that we are enjoying have join our family, both Ranger's and my immediate family as well as the Rangeman family."

We arrived at the Rangeman facility and parked in the underground. Amelia and I went up to the apartment, and kicked off our boots when we entered. I hung up our jackets. "Have you bought any things for the baby yet?" said Amelia.

I smiled. "Several things", I said. I took her into the room we had designated as the nursery. In one corner of the room was an upholstered rocking chair in a cream microsuede that we had thought would be good for midnight feedings. In the other corner was the jogging stroller that friends of Ranger's, Wes and Lizzie, had given us. Ranger said that he looked forward to taking the baby for a run when she was fussy. He thought that taking her outside for a run would soothe her more than any other thing that we could do. I could only hope that he was right. Beside the stroller was a box of clothing and some receiving blankets. Lizzie had made the receiving blankets herself, and on the corners had embroidered two giraffes cuddling with hearts floating around them. I picked up the box of clothing to carry into the dining room to show Amelia.

When there, I let Amelia unpack the box as I made a pot of peppermint tea. She ooh'd and aah'd over the clothes, and I got to admire them at the same time. Our little girl was going to be well-dressed. I looked forward to seeing the outfits on the baby. If she looked anything like Ranger, she would be the cutest baby around.

"Do you plan on having more babies after you have Tia?" said Amelia.

"Probably", I said. "I never wanted my child to be a one-and-only. I mean, Julie will be an older sister but she lives in Florida and won't be able to play as much of a role in the baby's life as I would like."

"What's Julie like?"

"She's a great kid. She's almost fourteen and has it all. She's absolutely gorgeous, is athletic and swims three hours a day, goes for an hour run daily, and does aikido three times a week. In addition to having far more energy that a person has a right to have, she is brilliant and has skipped a grade and still has the highest marks out of the entire school. She's very directed towards achieving her goals and will work hard at something until she realizes her dream. Having said all that, she is very down-to-earth and is one of the nicest kids that I have ever met. She is very mature for her age and is a nice person to spend time with."

"Do you see her much?"

"Not as much as we would like. However, Ranger has just made arrangements with Rachel, his ex, for Julie to come up to Trenton the third weekend each month. Julie is thinking that she'd like to attend UPenn, and we want her to get used to the weather up here so that it's not such a shock to her. Rachel agrees that this is a good idea and said that, although she will miss her, she is glad that Julie is forming a tighter relationship with her father. A couple of years ago Julie had been kidnapped by someone trying to take over Ranger's life. I let myself get kidnapped so that I could protect her, and the man was intent upon eliminating Ranger and making Julie and me into his family. The upshot was that Ranger walked into my apartment, where Julie and I were and gave himself up with the intention of getting shot. The man shot Ranger and Julie shot the man. He died at the scene and Ranger was whisked into emergency surgery. Julie has since decided that anyone who was willing to be killed to protect her was a good person to trust and know. "

"My God! Was she okay?"

"She was. She went through therapy for a while afterwards, but she is a well-adjusted child. However, maybe because of her experience, she is a little more mature than many kids her age."

"Did her mother blame Ranger?"

"No. Rachel and Ranger are good friends and they have a lot of respect for each other. She realizes that he did everything in his power to get Julie back before she was hurt, even to the point of offering himself up to be killed in her stead. From what I understand, Rachel was a good support both to Julie after the fact, as well as to Ranger to keep him informed of how Julie was recovering from her ordeal. Julie has developed a lot of respect for her father.

"That respect was really important a month ago. We had Julie and Rachel and Ron up for our wedding, and when they were here we discovered that Julie had a stalker, a pedophile who was taking pictures of her, some of them naked, and sending them to her with disturbing and inappropriate messages. The man was trying to get Julie to meet with him and, when she refused, he threatened to rape her and her mother and, if she told anyone, he said he'd kill Rachel. Julie was beside herself and didn't want to tell anyone because she didn't want her mother to die. I found out, and I told Rachel and Ron and Ranger. Julie was terrified that Ranger would look down on her for giving as much information to the stalker as she had."

"What happened?"

"Ranger got Leo to trace the emails and identify the stalker. When we knew the name, I researched him and found out that he was a pedophile and a drug trafficker, and that he was protected by diplomatic immunity. When I had found out everything that I could, Ranger did his job. He contacted the DEA and told them the route that we thought the drugs were coming in, and the people who were involved. We contacted the Miami police to report the drug trafficking and the stalking, and Ranger talked to a representative of the Honduran government to discuss the charges and the diplomatic immunity. The upshot was that the Honduran government recalled the family to Honduras and charged them with the drug trafficking and pedophile charges, and they should be imprisoned for a long time. When I talked to Rachel a few days ago, she said that Julie seemed okay but just in case she had set her up for a few sessions with a therapist to ensure that she continues to be okay with what happened. She said that Ranger's interest in having Julie up to visit one weekend a month seemed to do more to make her feel better than anything else. Apparently Julie had been very worried that he would be angry or ashamed of her for becoming a victim."

"Did Ranger not have her up before?"

"Until Julie was kidnapped, he hadn't spent much time with her. When he went down to Florida, he would take her out for dinner or have her stay overnight the odd time, but as far as weekends with her he would see her at her house for Easter and she would come up to Trenton for Thanksgiving. That was it. However, after she was kidnapped she seemed to make a concerted effort to communicate with him. She started emailing with him and, mixed with Rachel's frequent emails telling Ranger how Julie was, he developed a pretty good feel as to the kind of person she was. Now she emails Ranger on a daily basis, and I email with her usually every day as well. The emails are often very short, but the contact is there. I also phone Rachel about once a week. Rachel is a nice person that I am becoming good friends with."

"So you're increasing your time spent with her to include weekends."

"Yes, and this summer she is planning on coming for the whole summer. Rachel and Ron are planning on going away for a European holiday for a few weeks, and Rachel asked if we could take Julie. Julie is excited as she would then get to spend some time with the baby. I'm hoping to have a week or two with Julie before the baby is born, just so that we have some time to concentrate just on her."

"Are you looking forward to having her up then?"

"Are you kidding? It will be awesome! I am thrilled that Rachel doesn't mind sharing Julie so much. Until Julie was about seven, Rachel had almost continual care of Julie. Ranger was overseas and wasn't stateside often enough to spend much time with her. Then, when he retired from the army, he spent more time with Julie but Julie wasn't really interested in spending more time with him. Now, she wants to have a relationship with him. It is nice to see. Ranger is such a good man that I am thrilled that Julie sees that and appreciates him."


	9. Chapter 9

I started the pee test when I got up in the morning. I almost forgot, and it was only seeing the bottle on the counter next to the toilet that reminded me. I took my sample and put the jar in the fridge. Personally, I found it a bit gross, but the sample bottle needed to be kept cool so I didn't have any choice. I did, however, tell Amelia that it wasn't apple juice. It just went to show how much I liked Amelia. If it had been my sister, I wouldn't have told her.

Ranger called me at nine in the morning. "I didn't wake you, did I, babe?" he said.

"No. I was already up. I've started my pee test and have had my first coffee of the day. How are you doing?"

"Okay. I just needed to hear your voice."

"I needed to hear yours as well. Did you have a nightmare last night?"

"I did." Ranger sounded disgusted. "How did the dinner go with your family?"

"Amelia is suddenly grateful for her aunt and uncle. They don't seem so bad now, after meeting Val."

"Was Val mean again?"

"She said that you going to Little Rock was proof that you were already getting tired of me. She said all sorts of hateful things and, to make matters worse, she requested my mother to make cabbage rolls for dinner."

"Bitch. What did you do?"

"I told my mother that I was watching my weight and only wanted a half a cabbage roll. She gave me two. Luckily, Morelli called in the middle of dinner and asked for help with a case, and Amelia and I had to leave right away to help him."

"You're not supposed to be working, babe."

"Anything was less stressful than being in my parents' house with my sister."

"She was that bad?"

"In short, yes. She reiterated that you were going to leave me, she told me that I was an unnatural mother for wanting to work, she belittled my inability to cook…you name it, and she denigrated me and my abilities."

"You notice that she never says anything like that when I'm around?"

"I never told you this, but about four years ago, before she got married to Albert, she wanted me to set her up with you. She was heavily infatuated with you and was not happy when I wouldn't arrange for you to take her out. I thought that she was over that and that she was happy that she had married Albert, but maybe she isn't as happy as she appears – and maybe she still isn't over her infatuation. I wonder if she is running me down so that she can make another attempt to settle down with you."

"I would never be interested in her."

"Why not? She's like a better version of me."

"No, she isn't. She isn't as caring, as generous, as selfless, as compassionate, as charitable or as intelligent as you. She isn't as hard a worker, as determined, as resourceful or has as good a sense of humor. You make me laugh, you humble me…and that's not including your body. You are stunningly beautiful both inside and out, and I don't know why you are with me."

"Morelli said that Val was jealous, and that for years she has prided herself as being the better person because of her ability to be a mother and wife. He said that her ability to parent children and to be part of a married couple was how she defined herself, and if I was also having children and being part of a married couple, she was no longer unique and special, and he felt she was reeling because of that. He said she was just being catty and spiteful."

"I would agree with that."

"I'm not a particularly nice person, I'm afraid. I want to do something to get back at her, but I don't want that at the same time. Morelli says that she just doesn't want to share the pedestal that she's on, and she doesn't realize she was the person that put herself on that pedestal."

"What do you think that we should do about it?"

"While I would really like to do something to slap that smug and superior expression off her face, I know that the ultimate punishment would be for us to do nothing."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, she is angry that I am married and am having a baby, and therefore stealing her thunder. However, if I'm right, she is also angry that I am settling down specifically with you and am having children with you. The best punishment, therefore, is for us to take the high road and just have a good life, a loving life, and have the kind of relationship that other people talk about."

"Can I at least hug and kiss you more frequently in her presence?"

"I love your hugs and kisses anytime, whether my sister is there or not."

"And I love any excuse. What did Morelli need help with?"

"You know Simon Diggory?"

"The grave robber?"

"Yes. There has been someone going around and stealing bodies out of graves. Apparently there have been fourteen bodies stolen so far, and the police are struggling to keep a lid on it. Their best suspect is Simon just because of his nocturnal habit. Morelli brought him into the station to have a chat last night, and Simon refused to talk to him. He said that I was the only person that he would talk to. So Morelli called and asked me if there was any way that I could talk to Simon and, at the same time, he sweetened the deal and offered to take Amelia and me out to Pino's for dinner. Now, remember, I had two cabbage rolls sitting at my plate and to tell you the truth, no amount of pineapple upside-down cake made eating cabbage rolls worthwhile. So I gave up my chance for cake in exchange for the ability to escape cabbage rolls and eat dinner with someone who wasn't taking pot shots at me. Amelia and I left and met Morelli and Simon at Pino's, and I taught Morelli how to get information from a witness the way that I do it."

"What did Simon have to say? I have trouble believing that he was responsible."

"That's what I said to Joe. I told him that Simon was a thief who stole rings and necklaces and watches. The most, however, that he stole body parts was when he stole teeth filled with gold fillings. I didn't believe, and still don't believe, that he is the person stealing bodies."

"I would agree with that."

"So we talked to Simon, and he said that he saw a couple of men stealing a body the other night. He said that he tried to follow them, but he lost them when they got to their van and put the body in and drove away. By the time he got to his car, they were long gone."

"What did Morelli think?"

"He believed him and gave Simon his number to call if and when he saw the men again."

"Okay. I'm glad that he believed Simon. While Simon has a history of breaking the law, he doesn't usually break it in a major way. He would never commit murder or deal drugs – and I can't see him desecrating a body. Sure, he will take away their jewelry, but he would never do something that he would have a problem looking at himself in the mirror the day afterwards. And as far as he believes, he isn't really stealing as the owners of the jewelry aren't even aware that they are still wearing the jewelry, and he believes that the jewelry could benefit him more than it could a dead guy."

"I agree. Simon isn't a bad sort. He just is a little more entrepreneurial than many people."

"Look, babe, I have to go. Bill and I are going out for breakfast together so that we can talk about the company, where it is and where it is going, and how the Little Rock location fits into the corporation as a whole. Take care of yourself, pee frequently, and remember to take time today to rest and relax."

"I love you."

"I love you too." He paused for a moment. "God, I wish I was with you right now."

"I wish you were here too. I miss you."

"I miss you too."

"Bye." I hung up seconds later and swallowed back tears. I didn't want Ranger to be in Little Rock. I wanted him to be home in Trenton, with me. I still didn't have a good feeling about Ranger being away, and I had no reason to justify it.


	10. Chapter 10

By the time the day was done, I wasn't feeling any more comfortable with Ranger being gone. However, Amelia had kept me busy. We had done some good work on the design of the house. Amelia had acted like a kid in a candy shop with the design of her room, and we had bounced several ideas around for the décor. At the end of the day, we had a good idea as to some of the features we wanted, and a general paint scheme and feel of the room that we were going for. As I told Amelia, however, she could sleep on her final design for quite a few weeks. We weren't going to be finalizing the design until after the baby was born.

I was so excited about our new apartment that it was nice to spend time with someone who was equally as excited. Ranger was excited as well, but his was a quiet excitement. It wasn't the wide-eyed wonder that Amelia had. I realized that she had been serious when she said that she hadn't decorated her own room since she was in her early teens – and she was serious when she said that she was going to enjoy every minute of doing it now.

We were lucky in that our tastes were fairly similar. We both preferred neutrals and we both preferred light, soft colors. Our style was more farmhouse-chic rather than modern or contemporary. She liked the idea of having rooms with unique features, whether it was a brick wall or wainscoting and a chandelier. She agreed that it would be an awesome spot to live. "And I thought this place was nice", said Amelia after she looked at the plans. "My room is going to be huge, and I love how it opens onto the belvedere. I'll be able to open the doors when it is sunny out and let fresh air into my suite."

I smiled. I had the same sort of plans with my own bedroom.

I gave my final pee in the bottle for the night, and tried to decide what to do to encourage me to think before peeing in the middle of the night. It was a twenty-four hour pee test, and it would be bad if I forgot to collect one of my nighttime pees.

I closed the toilet seat and put the transfer bottle on the closed seat. I hoped that being required to move the transfer bottle and put up the toilet seat would wake me up enough to remember that I needed to collect my sample.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth and changed into my nightie, and climbed into bed a few minutes later. I cuddled deep into the blankets and pulled over Ranger's pillow. I took a deep sniff and felt my pulse settle. Ranger hadn't called, and I didn't want to bother him. I needed to talk to him though. I was still feeling unsettled and I really needed to hear his voice. A hug would be even better, but hearing his voice would have to do. I wouldn't be able to get a hug until the next day, and I was counting down.

The phone rang and I smiled and rolled over, grabbed my phone and answered the call. "Hey", I said.

"Stephanie?" said Simon. He was whispering. "The men are back. They just started to dig down in Henrietta's grave when I saw them. They will be here for another half hour or so. You need to come. You can follow the van while I follow them on foot."

"Okay. Where is the van parked?"

"Outside the back gate. You can't miss it."

"We'll be there as soon as we can."

I hung up with Simon and ran to Amelia's room. I knocked on her door and quickly explained what was going on. "I need to get dressed", I said as I finished.

"You're supposed to be resting, not chasing criminals."

"I'm going, Amelia. You can come with me or you can stay here, but I'm going." I ran back into my bedroom. I put on a pair of fuzzy socks, a pair of tights, and an oversized maternity flannel shirt, scraped my hair back into a ponytail, and hustled to the front door. I met Amelia as she ran out of her room. "Are you coming then?" I said.

Amelia groaned. "Ranger is going to kill me."

"Ranger won't be home until tomorrow night. In the meantime, Simon needs our help." I pulled out my phone again as I ushered Amelia out of the door and locked it behind us. As we waited for the elevator, I phoned Morelli. "Hey", I said. "I'm sorry to wake you."

"That's okay. I haven't been asleep long."

I walked onto the elevator and pushed the button for the basement. "Simon called. The two men are at the cemetery digging up Henrietta's grave. Simon said that he would follow them, but he suggested that we show up and follow the car."

"You need to stay home, cupcake. Leave this to me. It's too dangerous. I don't want you anywhere near this case."

"Joe, I'm already on the way. I'll meet you there." I could hear Joe get out of bed and pull some clothes on.

"Cupcake, you aren't supposed to be working. You're on sick leave, aren't you?"

"Yes, but Simon called me and he trusts me. I'll see you there." I hung up the phone as we arrived in the basement, and I hurried over to the car. I beeped it unlocked and climbed in, and Amelia looked at the car.

"I really think this is a bad idea."

"I'm going, Mellie. It's your choice as to whether you stay or go, but I'm leaving."

Amelia got in the car.

I drove out of the Rangeman parking lot and headed towards the cemetery, and after ten minutes of driving a little too fast, I arrived at the back entrance. I parked, and seconds later Joe jumped into the back seat. I hadn't seen him coming though, and he made me jump. "What the hell are you doing?" he said. "You should be at home in bed."

"I'm fine, Joe."

"You're pregnant. You should be leaving this to me. I'm the police, remember?"

"Joe, I'm fine. Do you want me to call Simon?"

"No. I don't want to take the chance that the ringer goes off."

"We can't leave him out there by himself. He could be in trouble."

"I hear you. If I go and look for him, do you promise to stay put?"

"Scout's honor", I said. I gave a four-fingered salute.

"Scouts use a three-fingered salute, cupcake, unless you are a cub. Then you use a two-fingered salute."

"Really? I never thought of it before. The closest I got to being a Scout was dating one when I was in high school – and all he wanted was a five-fingered salute."

"I thought I was your first", said Joe.

I smiled. "I said that he _wanted_ a five-fingered salute. I didn't say that he got one. He was my shortest-lasting boyfriend."

"So much for scout's honor", said Amelia.

I laughed.

"I'm going to look around", said Morelli. "Stay in the car, cupcake. I don't want to have to explain to Ranger why you were working on your sick leave."

"I'm not doing research."

"Somehow I don't think Ranger will see the distinction." He opened the door again. "Be safe."

He closed the door softly as I turned to Amelia. "Joe needs help. I promise to stay in the car, but I'm worried about Joe and Simon. I haven't heard from Simon, and I expected to hear from him again by now."

"But it's a good sign that the van is still here, isn't it?"

"Yes, but something is telling me that Simon is in trouble."

"Joe is looking into it."

"I know, but something is wrong."

"How on earth can you know that?"

I sighed. "Alright, I don't know that something is wrong. However, I think that something is. I don't know why, but I think that something is wrong and I think we should investigate."

"No! Ranger said that you weren't supposed to be working at all, which means that you shouldn't be out here. And you promised Joe that you would wait in the car."

"I promised that _I_ would wait in the car. I didn't promise that _you_ would wait in the car."

"No, no, no. I'm waiting with you. I'm not leaving you alone."

"But…"

"No buts. I already don't feel confident about what we are doing. I definitely don't feel confident about leaving you alone. Like you, I have a bad feeling. Because of that, I think that it would be a good idea for us to stick together."

I put my hand down on Amelia's as I shushed her. I pointed to a couple of men. They each had a body slung over their shoulders. As they passed through a moonbeam, I saw a woman that I didn't recognize over one person's shoulder, and Simon slung over the other.

I waited until they put the bodies in the back of the van. "Write the license plate down", I said. "And when the van is leaving the cemetery, we'll follow."

"Why don't we wait for Joe?"

"Because Joe won't get here in time, and I don't want to lose our chance to find out where those bodies are going."

"This is a bad idea", said Amelia.

"That may be, but we are the best chance that Joe has of cracking the case open." The men shut the back door and walked around to the front doors. "Besides, they have Simon." They climbed into the cab, started the car, and drove out of the cemetery.

I followed the men with my lights off. "Call Joe", I said, "and let him know that we are in pursuit." I recited Joe's number out loud, and Amelia dialed it into her phone. The call went over the hands-free phone link in the car. As Joe answered, she said, "we are pursuing the van. They have Simon."

"Stop following them", said Joe.

"Hey, Joe", I said.

"Stop following them, cupcake", said Joe. "This is not your schtick. You should stay out of this. I could kill Simon for getting you involved."

"Joe, they have Simon. We have to save Simon. Just think of all those Diggory children running around without a father. How would they be able to cope?"

"Steph, this is police business and although you work in the justice field, the last I checked you were not a police officer."

"I've been deputized."

"Yes, but that was so that we could share information with you for research. That wasn't so that you could follow someone who may be dangerous."

"Are you at your car yet?"

"Almost. Where are you?"

"Talk to the control room regarding my location. I will phone the alert in."

"When you get to your location, phone it in and get out of there."

"Yes, sir."

"I mean it, cupcake."

"I'll take that under advisement", I said. "Simon is what is important here. I have to phone the control room. Got to go."

I hung up the phone and called the control room. "Hey, Eduardo", I said as he answered. "Morelli will be calling soon to find out my location. I need you to track me so that you can tell him where I am."

"What's going on, Steph?" said Hal.

"Hey, Hal. I'm following someone who has a dead body and a witness in his van, and I am trying to find out where they are going. Morelli is following me, but while I can see the van Morelli can't see us. He'll need to be apprised of our location."

"Okay, Steph. Remember your panic button and we'll coordinate things from here. I have a bad feeling about all this."

"There are a lot of bad feelings going around", I said. "So do Amelia and I."

"Come on home then", said Hal. "Your instinct is usually spot-on."

"I can't leave, Hal", I said. "Simon is in trouble."

"Simon?"

"Simon Diggory. He's the witness that was helping us out by following the men who kidnapped him."

"Okay. I'll send out an ERT to meet you there, and I'll let Morelli know that they are coming. Whatever you do, stay in the car."

"Okay."

"Oh, shit", said Hal softly.

"Hal?"

"Babe?" said Ranger. "What's going on? Why aren't you at home in bed sleeping, as all good pregnant women who have been instructed not to work should be?"

"What are you doing home?" I knew I was in trouble, but I was so happy that he was back in Trenton that I didn't mind.

The van came turned into an industrial complex and I turned off my lights and followed it. I parked in the street outside a large warehouse.

"I finished up my work and came home early", said Ranger. "I was worried about you."

"I'm okay."

"So why aren't you in bed sleeping?"

"Simon is in trouble, and I was following him. Morelli couldn't get to his car fast enough."

"No, I mean why are you out at all?"

"Simon called me and asked me to come, and I called Morelli and told him to come but, in the meantime, I came out to provide support to Simon."

"Is Amelia there with you?"

"Yes, she is."

"Stay with her, Amelia", said Ranger.

"Like glue", said Amelia.

"You seem to have stopped", said Ranger.

"The person driving the van has stopped at this industrial unit. I'm just watching over things until Morelli and the ERT shows up."

"As soon as they arrive, I want you to come home."

I smiled. "Absolutely."

"And then we can have a talk about the meaning of not working."

"I'm not working. I'm not doing research at all."

"You can dress it up any way you like, but somehow I don't think that the doctor would see the distinction."

"But Ranger…"

"No buts, babe. Chasing someone is not good for your blood pressure – or mine. Come home as soon as the cavalry shows up."

I saw some shapes out of my rearview mirror, shapes that looked like men, and they were approaching our vehicle fast. "Oh shit", I said.


	11. Chapter 11

Ranger luckily went quiet.

"Pull the map out of the glove compartment", I said to Amelia.

She looked at me quizzically before rummaging around in the glove compartment to find the map. She pulled it out as the men approached the car, one on each side. The man on my side knocked on the window as I peered at the map. I pretended to jump and looked over at the man. "My God, you scared me!"

"What are you doing here?" said the man.

"We're lost, and we pulled off the road so that we could figure out where we were. Do you know the closest cross streets?"

"Open your car and bring out your map, and we'll show you where you are."

"I don't know you", I said. "Although I appreciate the offer, I don't think my husband would be happy if I opened the door to a stranger."

The man on Amelia's side inserted a tool into her door and unlocked it while our attention was on the man on the driver's side, and he threw open the door and unlocked all doors before taking off Amelia's seatbelt and yanking her out of the car.

I grabbed my purse and tried to reach for my phone but, before I could, the man on the driver's side threw open the car and in a move reminiscent of what they did to Amelia, he reached in and undid my seatbelt and pulled me out of the car. I started to struggle, and so did Amelia, but a third person arrived and swung a tire iron at me and hit me in the head. That was the last thing that I remembered.

When I came to, I was in a dark room, lying on a cold metal table, with a headache the size of Texas. I felt my head. It felt sticky with blood and was painful to the touch. Judging by the size of my headache, I thought I must have a concussion.

I strained to see something in the dark. Except for a faint outline of the light shining through the door from the other room, there was absolutely no light at all. I could hear men talking and I struggled to overhear. "I move that we kill them", said one man. "The pregnant one would bring in a lot of money. People would pay to have her baby." I started to shake and pressed my panic button. No one was taking my baby if I had anything to do with it, and I could only hope that Ranger got to me in time to save us.

"Yes, but we aren't in the business of killing people", said the other man. "We just chop up the dead bodies. Yes, we provide body parts. But the people are already dead and are just providing body parts to us. It's a whole other thing to kill people as well."

"We are already committing a crime by digging up body parts."

"Yes, but somehow I think that the jury would consider it to be not nearly as important as murdering someone. I mean, right now we are just digging up dead people, dismembering them, and selling off the body parts. There is no law against the dismembering them and selling off the parts. There is just a law against digging up the remains of buried people. If the family members had donated the parts to medical science there wouldn't be a problem."

"So we are already going down. Murder isn't that much worse."

"Are you kidding? Murder is a lot worse." I was reassured that Amelia and Simon were okay. If the two men were debating the philosophical question as to whether murder or dismembering previously dead body parts was more acceptable, I figured that they hadn't actually done the murdering yet.

"Let's see who this woman is", said the man. I could hear him rummaging through my purse, and exclaim as he found my Rangeman identification. Ranger had made Rangeman shields and identification that purposely looked like TPD identification, so that we could use it when we were picking up skips. Sometimes, having something official convinced people to cooperate. "She's a police officer." And sometimes, having the identification look so realistic was a detriment.

"Fuck. We have to kill her now."

"Look on the bright side. That baby will bring in a lot of money. There aren't too many people who would have a fetus that could be purchased."

"Who do you think would want to purchase a fetus?"

"I don't know. Perhaps a medical school so that they can learn how to work on babies in the womb? If she was dismembered so that the baby was still in her womb…that would let someone who was learning how to operate on babies while they were in utero practice on a real specimen."

"So what are you thinking? Dismember her so that we were able to harvest the arms, the shoulders, the legs, the brain, and the torso? That would probably get maximum value out of the body. Who uses all these parts, anyway?"

"A variety of places. The company just had an order for five hundred ankles for an orthopedic conference. That's why the boss is scrambling. Five hundred ankles are two hundred and fifty people, and we've only processed two hundred. Normally we would only harvest the parts through our donation program, but we have to come up with a hundred more ankles by the end of the month, and I don't know how many people will be donated by then."

"So that means that we'll be searching through the graveyards for the next month?"

"Yes. At least it isn't as cold out now. The ground isn't freezing as fast."

"Thank God. What should we do with the three people? Of course we want to kill the pregnant one, but what about the other woman and the man?"

"I think that we should first find out what the man wanted with us. He had to be following us in the cemetery for a reason."

"That's true. Should we also ask the woman to see what they wanted? After all, if the police are after us it would be a good idea to be forewarned."

"Let's leave them to get good and scared, and go to the other cemeteries and finish our run. Three more bodies were buried today and the boss wants us to pick them up. After they are collected, we can put them in the cooler with the man and the woman, and kill off the pregnant one and dismember her. I think the boss will be very happy with us. He should be able to charge several thousand for a fetus, just because they don't show up very often."

I heard a shuffle and the light went off around the door, and I waited to see if the men were coming back. As far as I could tell, they didn't. I must have waited for five minutes and, when I thought they had probably left, I slowly slid to the floor and walked to where the light had been sneaking in. I felt around on the wall until I found a light switch and flicked it on, and looked around me. There were three metal tables with drains around the rims. I looked in the drains, and there was a pool of rusty-red liquid lying there. The sight of the liquid mixed with the metallic scent in the air made me think the liquid was blood. I struggled not to throw up.

I looked to the side of the room, and there were shelves with a variety of chainsaws and other cutting instruments. In the blades of the instruments were bone fragments and pieces of pink tissue. I would assume that it was all human.

My breath was coming so hard and so fast that I was starting to get dizzy, and I tried to consciously slow my breathing down. The last thing I needed was to be found lying on the floor, passed out. If I did, I would be no help to anyone, and Amelia and Simon needed my help very badly. My stomach wasn't cooperating with my need to calm down, however, and I ran to the sink in the corner of the room and tossed my cookies, relieved that the men had left and weren't there to hear me upchuck.

When I finished vomiting, I looked around again and picked out a gas chainsaw as a potential weapon. I didn't know how to use one, but I figured it couldn't be too hard and, if I couldn't get it started, I could at least throw it at the assailant and hopefully knock them out.

I crept over to the doors on the opposite side of the room. They were thick and reminded me of the freezer room that was in the ice cream plant that Ranger had me working in undercover a year or so ago. I remembered how cold it was, and I could only hope that Amelia and Simon hadn't been in there for long. I didn't know how long I was out.

I opened the door to the freezer and called out. The freezer room was dark and cold, and there were body parts strewn around the room. I heard someone shuffling and sniffling and mumbling at the same time, and I turned towards the sound. Amelia was on the floor, a piece of duct tape over her mouth, her arms and hands duct taped together. I rushed over to her and pulled the duct tape off her mouth. "Thank God", she said. "I thought they'd killed you."

"Better men than them have tried and failed." I tried to break through the tape, but it wasn't tearing. I picked up the chainsaw and ran it across the tape several times until enough of it shredded that I'd be able to pull it off.

Amelia smiled as I got the tape loose on her hands. She started to work on her feet. "Simon is in the corner', she said, "and he is still knocked out. He had come to as they were putting the tape on him and he had started to struggle, so they hit him again and he's still knocked out. They had got the tape on me before I had woken up."

"Okay. While you work on your ankles I'll work on Simon's hands."

I found Simon in the dim light and crept over to him. I ripped the tape off his lips and started to work at the tape.

One of the men – a different one from before – entered the dismemberment room and walked over to the open door to the freezer just as I got the tape undone on Simon's hands. He peered inside and saw the three of us. "Sylvester said that he had got a woman who was pregnant, but Christian seemed to have a problem with killing you. Locking you in the freezer and letting you die from hypothermia would be a fitting end."

I picked up the chainsaw and rushed him and, as I got close, I threw the chainsaw in his face. The man ducked and laughed. "It doesn't pay to be curious", he said.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I have an order for five hundred ankles to fill, and I need ankles. With the haul that Sylvester and Christian are bringing in tonight, mixed with the three of you, I will only have forty more people to dismember to be able to complete my order."

"So you kill people and dismember them to get body parts?" I knew that Morelli and Ranger and an ERT team were coming. I just had to keep him talking long enough to give them the time to locate us.

"We don't normally kill people. Normally we just dismember people that are already dead. That isn't against the law. We offer the alternative to grieving family members that we'll pay for the funeral in return for them offering the body to us to be used for science. We then take the body and chop it into different body parts so that they could be used by the various medical facilities for medical research." He paused. "Although, once, we sold the bodies to the army for testing blast impacts."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"No, it's perfectly legal."

"If it's perfectly legal, why are you going to kill us to keep us quiet?"

"Dismembering dead people and selling the body parts for science is perfectly legal. Digging dead people up in the cemetery is not. However, we have to dig up the dead people. Our buyer has to have the five hundred ankles in a couple of weeks, and I promised him that we'd deliver. We almost have enough. A few more good weeks at the funeral home and we'll have the parts that we need."

"How did you get into this business?"

"That's enough talking", said the man with a frown on his face. As I rushed him again, he slammed the freezer door in my face and I could hear the mechanisms lock. I looked around me and took a few deep breaths to try to stop myself from screaming. It was pitch black, and I was in the freezer with a number of body parts, and I was having a hard time keeping my shit together. A hysterical laugh welled up.

"What's so funny?" said Amelia.

"I was just imagining Lula's reaction to being locked into a freezer in the pitch black surrounded by dismembered body parts." Lula was a friend of mine who worked in the bonds office with me, and she was a little dramatic.

Amelia snorted. She had met Lula about two months before, when we were being shot at outside the bonds office. Lula had been pretty tame that day but, even so, she had been dramatic enough that Amelia had gotten a taste for what she was like.


	12. Chapter 12

Simon moaned.

"Hey, Simon, you okay?" I said. "I'd come over there to feel your head for lumps and bumps, but I'm a little scared to walk in the dark while not knowing where to put my feet. The last thing that I want is to trip over someone's big toe and land in a pile of pelvises."

"That would be bad", said Amelia.

"Yeah, I'm not that kind of girl", I said. "If I was going to put my head in someone's pelvis willingly, I would want to know where that pelvis had been in the past."

"I can see your point", said Amelia. I could tell that she was struggling not to laugh, and I caught a note of hysteria in her voice as well. Of course, she was actually sitting on the floor with all those body parts, and I suspected that the floor was sticky with dried blood where she was sitting. I figured that she'd have to have a long hot shower to clean herself off before she would ever feel better.

"Are you still seeing Gabriel?" I said to Amelia.

"Yeah", she said. "I see him tomorrow."

"Good. I think that you'll need his support after this one", I said. "This is the stuff that gives you nightmares."

"Great, more nightmares", said Amelia with disgust.

"I'm cold", said Simon.

"So am I", I said. "The men who brought us here took my coat, and I'm finding that the freezer isn't very comfortable when you are wearing just a shirt."

"They left my coat on", said Amelia.

"They left my coat on as well", said Simon. "I wonder why they took your coat off."

"They were probably measuring the size of the baby bump", I said.

"How far along are you?" said Simon.

"Twenty-five weeks as of today." I paused as I shivered violently. "I have to pee."

"There's no bathroom, but I'm sure there are some bladders around so if you find them, it won't be like you are peeing on people's bodies", said Amelia.

"Crap", I said. "I don't want to pee on people's bodies. I thought it was just bad enough that I had to pee and I wouldn't be able to capture it in the pee test. That won't throw off the pee test, will it? I don't want to have to do the pee test again."

Simon moaned. "Can you please stop talking about peeing? You're going to have to make me go."

I started to dance around. "At least you have a fire hose. If I pee, I'll have to squat and my butt might touch someone's hand on the way down. It would be much easier for you." I felt around the door and tried to find an escape hatch. Didn't they have a way to get out of them in case you were locked into the freezer by mistake?

I felt all over the icy door, and didn't find anything. I then carefully stepped to the left. As far as I remembered, there was a pile of heads lying to the left, and I didn't want to stumble over old Aunt Nellie by mistake.

I felt along the wall, carefully shuffling my way. There wasn't anything that I could feel, so I shuffled to the right. "Aha!" I said.

"What did you find?" asked Simon.

"I found the latch that lets the door open from the inside."

"Woo-hoo!" said Amelia.

I pulled the latch. It came apart in my hand. "Oh oh", I said.

"That didn't sound so good", said Simon.

"What happened?" said Amelia.

"The latch detached from the wall and is now in my hand. I don't think that I can open the freezer door this way."

"What are we going to do?" said Simon.

"Have you got the tape off your ankles yet?" I said.

"Yes."

"What about you, Amelia? Have you got your tape off?"

"Yes, I have", said Amelia.

"I think we should all huddle in the same area", I said, "and try to conserve our heat."

"That means that we have to walk over to you, through all these body parts?" said Simon.

"I'm sorry", I said.

I could hear Simon stumble to his feet, and Amelia pull herself to hers. I could hear them start to shuffle towards me. "I'm going to shuffle to the middle of the freezer as well, if you could both shuffle to the middle. It is cold in the middle, but the vents for the air conditioning are around the outer edge of the floor and I think it is colder there."

I shuffled away from the door. My body was shivering so hard that I could hardly make it work, and my muscles felt stiff and uncoordinated rather than fluid. "Fuck, I need to pee", I said. "Being cold isn't helping. Everything is cramping up inside." I shuffled a little further and tripped over something, and fell into a pile of body parts. I didn't want to know what it was – or what I fell into. I could feel frozen body parts below me. I screamed and started to hyperventilate and, as I screamed, I wet my pants.

"What happened?" said Amelia.

"I just landed on a pile of body parts", I said. I started to cry. "And I wet my pants, and I think my pants are freezing."

"What kind of body part?" asked Amelia.

"I don't want to feel around to see", I said. I concentrated on my breathing as I tried to regulate it, and I put my hand down in the pile of body parts as I tried to hoist myself to my feet. With having the belly I was ungainly though, and I wasn't able to stand up. I shuddered in a panicked breath.

"Can you get up?" said Amelia.

I caught my breath on a terrified cry and adjusted myself so that I was kneeling in the bodies. I felt a cold, hard boob, and realized that I was kneeling on a pile of torsos. That seemed so much better than kneeling on a pile of heads, and I sighed in relief – then tried not to laugh hysterically as I realized that I was glad that I had landed in dismembered torsos.

Working from the kneeling position made it easier for me to get to my feet. I stood up again and, with the three of us making sounds, we slowly made our way to the center of the freezer and to each other.

"How will we get out of here?" said Simon as he found me. Amelia found me seconds later and the two of them surrounded me and cuddled me on each side. I was so cold that it must have been like cuddling an ice cube.

"Ranger knows that we are in the building and that we are in trouble. It shouldn't be too long until we are found", Amelia said. I was glad that she was thinking clearly. My brain felt like it was slowing down, and like I was walking through molasses.

"What do they want with us?" said Simon.

"Body parts…selling", I said. My teeth were chattering hard and my speech was becoming slurred. Amelia undid her coat and wrapped it around me, and cuddled my body into hers, but I didn't feel any warmer. Of course, coats were good at stopping heat loss. It felt like I wasn't producing any heat to conserve.

I don't know how long we stood there, but I know that it was a long time. I had gone from mentally praying for Ranger to come and rescue us to despairing that he'd be able to find us to not thinking at all. I wanted to go pee and then, after a while, I couldn't remember why it was a bad idea. I was so sleepy and I wished that I was at home, in bed, and warm under the duvet. I wondered if I would ever be warm again.

We heard a sound at the door, and I called out weakly as Amelia and Simon called out with a little more energy. We, however, were all a little too cold to make much of a sound.

We stood there for quite a bit longer. People were making sounds on the other side of the door, but they weren't opening the door. "I hope it isn't the men dismembering another body", said Amelia as her teeth chattered.

I wanted to say that another dismemberment would be bad, but my lips and tongue weren't cooperating.

The sounds of the men moving around died away, and I started to cry. Even my tears were cold against my skin. My head nodded as I struggled not to fall asleep, but I couldn't remember why it was a bad idea. I sagged in Simon's and Amelia's arms.

"Come on, Steph", said Amelia. She slapped me on the cheeks a few times. "Stay awake."

"What's happening?" said Simon.

"She's suffering from hypothermia", said Amelia.

I was vaguely aware of time passing. I was vaguely aware of hearing the men come back. I was vaguely aware of the men yelling to stand back, and then a loud bang. And then I was aware of nothing.


	13. Chapter 13

I came to on a stretcher, with the paramedic putting a heat pack on the back of my neck. He had put a blood pressure cuff on me, and an oxygen mask over my face. I looked over the head of the paramedic as he was spreading on another blanket and saw Ranger's panicked eyes. I pushed the oxygen mask off my face. "Amelia?"

The paramedic pushed the oxygen mask on my face again. "It's warmed air", he said. "Keep it on to warm you up faster."

He and his partner loaded me into an ambulance, and I looked around. There were two other ambulances as well. Each was in the process of shutting their doors and getting ready to speed to the hospital.

Ranger hopped into the ambulance beside me. I looked at him beseechingly. "Amelia is cold but essentially fine. Same with Simon. Both of them have some cuts and bruises from the blast, but nothing a few stitches won't fix. They'll be okay. You, however, weren't wearing your coat. Amelia said that she tried to keep you warm by wrapping you in her coat and she and Simon stood on each side of you to make a sandwich, but that by the time you all were standing together you were already battling hypothermia. And she said that things just got worse afterwards."

"How did you find us?"

"Pardon?"

I pulled the mask off again. "How did you find us?"

The paramedic put my mask on.

"We tracked your car to the industrial unit and tracked your purse inside. The ERT team searched and cleared the building, but they couldn't find the three of you. That was when I showed up. Hal told me that you weren't there, so we searched around for more information. Hal found your purse in a cabinet. Morelli and I personally searched and cleared the entire building again, and the only room that we hadn't cleared was the freezer. The guys had tried, but the freezer door was stuck and they thought that the freezer was empty.

"I thought, for some reason, that you were in the freezer. I tried to open the freezer and, when it didn't open, Hal got some C-4 and we opened it that way. When the dust cleared, I found you slumped in Amelia's and Simon's arms, all three of you suffering from hypothermia." He swallowed back a sob. "When you were unconscious, I thought you were dead."

I looked at him, and his eyes looked suspiciously bright. "I'm sorry", I said.

Ranger sighed. "I know, babe. But you were supposed to stay at home. You were supposed to be resting and relaxing. You weren't supposed to be chasing criminals." He swallowed hard. "You were supposed to stay safe", he said quietly.

The ambulance arrived at the hospital and whisked me into the emergency room. They settled me in a cubicle as a nurse hustled into the room. She took my temperature and affixed a blood pressure cuff and a pulse oximeter. She ran an IV as the doctor came in. "How are you?" she said. "Haven't I seen you here before?"

I groaned as the nurse took the oxygen mask off and put on nasal cannula. I thought I must be warming up. My thoughts weren't nearly as slowed as they had been. "You were the doctor that looked after me when I was shot last December. I had internal bleeding but was basically okay."

The doctor smiled. "I remember that. I thought you were incredibly lucky. Why are you here today?"

"I was locked in the freezer for a while by a bad guy, and now I'm very cold."

"I gathered that by the way that you're shivering", said the doctor. "The fact that you are particularly blue is an indicator as well. It's a little early for a costume party, so I didn't think that you meant to resemble Smurfette."

I made a face.

The doctor laughed. "Your temperature, which should be around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, is 92.2. We have to try to warm you up. The air that is coming through the nasal cannula is warmed, so that will help. The nurses are just getting some warmed blankets and we'll pile them on, so that will help. We will refresh them every fifteen minutes or so to ensure that they are always warmed. I'll also order some warm, sweet apple cider for you to drink, so that will help. And we will pump in warmed saline through your IV to warm your blood. In a few hours, you'll be feeling better."

She performed some tests with my vision and asked me some questions. When she finished, she said, "you have a mild concussion. However, many of the symptoms you have could either be because of the hypothermia or the concussion. After you warm up to a normal temperature, we will do some imaging to make sure that your concussion isn't causing you more problems than I suspect right now. In the meantime, you need to concentrate on warming up. That's your first priority."

"How about Simon and Amelia?"

"Those are the other two hypothermia patients who came in?"

"Yes."

"Their core temperatures weren't nearly as cold as yours. They'll be fine. They are warming up, but are essentially fine. Out of the three of you, you are far colder than they were to start off with, so they will respond to treatment faster as well."

"I have to pee."

"We'll put in a catheter. I don't want you out of the blankets long enough to pee right now."

That suited me just fine. With feeling as weak as I was, I wasn't sure that my legs would hold me up long enough for me to walk to the washroom, and Ranger was very good about carrying me places but I didn't really want him to have to carry me to the bathroom.

The doctor smiled at me. "Hang tight here. When did you last eat?"

"At dinnertime."

"Okay. How long were you in the freezer?"

"I don't know. At best guess, I went into it at midnight."

"Okay. You were in there about one and a half hours. That explains why you are so cold."

There was something I wanted to ask her, but I couldn't remember what it was.

"The nurses are going to change you out of your clothes. Your pants are damp."

"I wet them. I was trying to contain it so that I could save it for my pee test, but I wet my pants anyway."

"Okay. We'll change you out of them, and we'll put a hospital gown on. At the same time, the nurse will put a heart monitor on to see how your heart is doing from the cold."

I knew I wanted to ask her something, but catching my thoughts was hard. They were floating into my head and floating out again, and I couldn't seem to keep them in my head long enough to ask the question. I was so tired, and I closed my eyes and just floated. The doctor patted me on the foot, and a few minutes later I felt a nurse pull off my wet clothing and put me in a hospital gown. I was so tired I could hardly open my eyes. They inserted a catheter, cleaned and applied bandages to the deeper cuts that I experienced from the blast and spread on numerous warm blankets. I cuddled into the fabric and sighed.

Tank walked into my cubicle. Tank was Ranger's right-hand man, his Executive Vice-President, and Ranger's best friend. "Amelia said that Steph was hit on the head and knocked out, and that's how they got her into the building. Amelia was hit as well. When she woke up she had tape over her mouth and her arms and feet were restrained with duct tape. She said that it was dark and cold. After a few minutes, Steph opened the door of the freezer and moved a chainsaw over the tape on Amelia's hands to break her free. She then left her to take the tape off her feet while Steph worked on the tape on Simon. While she was taking the tape off Simon, one of their captors came to the door. It was a different captor than the two that had taken them from the car. Steph rushed the man with the chainsaw, but the man locked them in the freezer."

"Did Amelia say what they wanted?"

"She was a little confused. She said that Steph knew what was going on. She said that Steph had overheard the men talking, but she wasn't sure exactly why they were being held or what they wanted with them. She said that she thought they were trying to kill her, and she said that she'll have nightmares over the number of people that were dismembered in that freezer."

"So will I."

"She said that Steph fell in a pile of torsos", said Tank. "She said that Steph was keeping them calm and cracking jokes to stop them from panicking, but when she fell onto the dismembered body parts and couldn't get up because of being ungainly with the baby, she lost it."

"Christ."

"Yeah. Amelia said that Steph was worried about her and Simon more than she was worried about herself, and asked Amelia whether she was meeting with Gabriel soon."

Ranger sighed. "That sounds like Steph."

I could just hear Tank as he said softly, "don't be too hard on her. She's had the night from hell."

"I know that, but it shouldn't have happened." I could hear the sob in his voice.

"I know that. But Steph, no matter the cost to herself, will always help another person. Amelia is convinced that Simon would have died if it wasn't for Steph. She's a hero. If she had been a soldier, she might have been given a medal for her selfless act. That's the kind of person you married, and that's one of the things you love about her. You can't fault her on it now."

I drifted as Tank walked out of the room, and a few minutes later the nurse walked in with a warm apple juice. She checked the monitors and smiled as she wrote down the readings. "Drink the juice and I'll get you some warmed blankets." She left the room again and a few minutes later returned with the blankets.

I blearily opened my eyes as Ranger held the juice to my lips. "Drink it, babe", he said. "It will help you warm up."

I obediently opened my lips, and swallowed it as Ranger slowly tipped the cup of liquid into my mouth. I watched him carefully. His eyes were tight and his shoulders were tense. His face was pale and there were lines of strain bracketing his mouth.

"I'm okay", I said. I wiggled my hand out from under the mountain of blankets and clasped his arm.

Ranger put the empty cup of juice down on the table and sat on the bed beside me. He took my hand and wiggled it back under the blankets. But he didn't let go of my hand, so I was happy.

I took in his unhappy face. "I'm sorry", I said.

"I know, babe."

"I couldn't leave Simon alone. He was doing us a favor, and it was wrong to ask him to do that favor unsupported by us."

"I know."

"I could have died when the man shut the door on us."

"You almost did, babe."

I swallowed hard. "It was horrible."

"Tell me about it?"

"I was hit over the head." I looked at him, happy that I had remembered what I was going to ask. "I wanted to ask the doctor whether having a concussion could affect the baby."

"We need to ask the doctor whether the hypothermia affected the baby as well, but we can wait to do that after your core temperature has risen to a normal range."

"Don't let me forget again, okay?"

"Okay, babe. So you were hit over the head?"

"Yes. I have a brutal headache."

"How is your vision?"

"Wobbly. I threw up in the sink."

"I saw that someone had."

"Between the headache and the dizziness and the blood and guts, it was too much."

"I understand. So you woke up where? In the freezer?"

"No. When I woke up I was on the metal table in the dissection room. It was dark and I couldn't see anything. I could hear the two people who had taken us from the car."

"What did they say?"

"Bodies are donated to science and are taken from the funeral homes. In return for taking the bodies, the company pays for the funeral."

"What's the company?"

"He didn't say the name, but I think we were at their headquarters."

"We'll do a search to find out the company name."

"The guys take the bodies, cut them up and sell the pieces to various people. They said that it is legal."

"Why did they want to kill you if it is legal?"

"They said that it is legal to take donated bodies and cut them up, but it isn't legal to dig them up from the cemetery. And it really isn't legal to kill people, but when they saw that I was pregnant they got very excited. They said a womb with a fetus would bring in good money. That's why they wanted to kill us." I stopped to swallow hard as another wave of terror washed over me.

"You're safe now, babe. You're in the hospital and you're safe."

I gulped again. "For the bodies in the cemetery, they said that they have an order for five hundred ankles for an orthopedic conference. They have two hundred people and with the people they were picking up today and Simon and Amelia and me, they had another ten. They just have forty more people that they need to acquire before the end of the month."

"The freezer?"

"They store the body parts there. There were whole bodies there, but they had already started dismembering them so that they could obtain the ankles. When I overhead them talking, they were debating the need to kill us. They said that they had that order to fill, and they felt some pressure to fill the order. They debated the philosophical question as to whether it would be okay to kill us. However, the call of our baby was too strong to ignore."

"So they wanted to kill you because they wanted the baby?"

"Also, they looked through my purse and found my Rangeman badge and identification. They thought that I was a cop looking into the body snatching and that I was going to turn them in. They were very concerned about not meeting the five hundred-ankle goal."

"I wonder why it was so important to them."

"I don't know. They didn't say who their client was other than it was an orthopedic conference."

"Did they say how many people they have stolen from the cemeteries?"

"They didn't. I would assume that Morelli would know that number."

"When you called Morelli, what did he say?"

"He told me to stay home, that I wasn't trained in police work and that, although I was deputized, it was so that I could do research and not so that I could drive all over hell's half acres to protect a witness." I swallowed hard. "Or something to that effect."

"Then I don't have to kill him?"

"For what?"

"For letting you or encouraging you to get involved in the happenings tonight."

"It totally wasn't his fault. This was my own doing."

"And Amelia?"

"She tried to talk me out of going and then, when I insisted on going, she went along to protect me. When we were at the graveyard, I tried to get her to go help Joe look around the cemetery. I had promised Joe that I would stay in the car, but I hadn't promised that Amelia would stay in the car. I asked her to help Joe and she refused. So then, when we were following the van, Amelia was with me. And when the men approached us and asked us to get out of the car, and we refused, they unlocked Amelia's car door and yanked her out of the car. The man who took me then did the same, and when Amelia and I struggled another man came and hit me over the head. I should have remembered that there were three men rather than just the two, shouldn't I have? If I had, I might not have been caught in the freezer."

"It wasn't your fault, babe."

I figured my body temperature was warming up a bit, since I had stopped shivering so violently. I still felt like a block of ice though, and I smiled as the nurse came in to switch my blankets over to heated ones.

"So you woke up on the metal table", said Ranger. "What happened next?"

"I listened to the men until they left, then waited for a few minutes to make sure they were gone before I turned on the light." I told him about opening the freezer and finding Amelia and Simon and getting the chainsaw to work through the duct tape. I told him about the man coming to the door as I was trying to get the duct tape off and telling me that they had decided to kill us by freezing us to death, and then having him seal us in the freezer. "I think it was my fault that the door was jammed", I said, "since I had tried to get out the door with the escape latch, and the latch came apart in my hand."

"It wasn't your fault, babe. The freezer was an old one, and the mechanism probably just jammed. It won't jam again though."

"Did you really break into it with C-4?"

Ranger smiled slightly. "Hell, yeah", he said. "I was about ninety-eight percent certain you were in there, and I didn't want to waste any more time getting to you."

I smiled at him, tears in my eyes. "Thank you", I said. "I was starting to worry that you were too mad to come for me."

Ranger kissed me gently on my forehead. "Babe, I will always come for you."

The tears spilled over and flowed down my cheeks. I sniffled. "It was horrible, Ranger. There were all those cut up bodies, and it was dark and we couldn't see where we were or where we were going. I asked everyone to move to the center of the freezer since the cold air seemed to be coming in around the edges. I thought it would be better to be out of the breeze from the condenser or whatever you call it. I told everyone that we should get together and huddle so that we could conserve heat. We all started shuffling towards the center and calling out to the other people so that we could find them in the dark. And when I was walking towards the center, I tripped over a body part and landed in a pile of dismembered bodies. I hit my chin on someone's boob and face-planted on a neck that had already had the head cut off. So I was sprawled on the pile of dead bodies and I couldn't get up. I have never come closer to becoming hysterical than I did right then." I sniffled. "I want a shower so bad. I want to get dead people cooties off me."

Ranger smiled slightly. "Dead people cooties?"

"Yeah." I shuddered in a breath, then another, then tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, but no matter how much I regulated my breathing and tried to swallow, the tears flowed down my face. "Ranger?"

"Babe?"

"I really need a hug."

"I thought you'd never ask."

As he bent over and carefully gathered me in his arms, I said, "I'm glad that you don't mind getting dead people's cooties on you."

Ranger smiled and kissed my head. "I'm tough. I can take it."

"At least they were frozen, so I didn't get blood or guts or anything sticking to me."

"I'd still hug you", he said. "After all, if I can handle dead people's cooties, I can handle anything."


	14. Chapter 14

Ranger held me like that for some time. After a while, he said, "why don't I switch positions so that I am sitting beside you and you can cuddle in? That way, you can fall asleep. You didn't get any sleep last night, and I'd really like to see you nap for a while."

"Okay", I said. I was just glad that Ranger was planning on lying beside me. I really needed to cuddle in with him more than I was, and I was sure that Ranger's back was getting sore from bending over for so long.

We adjusted our position and Ranger carefully got into the bed beside me. He lay on top of the blankets, and I could see why. I had so many blankets piled on top of me that he would have melted if he had climbed in underneath. He put his arm around me, and I put my head on his chest and cried myself to sleep.

After some time, I woke up. The nurse was whispering to Ranger and taking my temperature, and smiling. I immediately felt resentful. The problem with Ranger being so good looking was that women everywhere hit on him. The nurse turned to me. "I'm sorry if we woke you", she said. She smiled. "I was just saying that your temperature is 95.9. We are definitely heading in the right direction. Do you want to take the warmed blanket off your head now? You might feel more comfortable if your head wasn't at such an unnatural angle when you were cuddled in."

I smiled, both grateful to know that she wasn't hitting on Ranger as well as grateful that I would be able to take the blanket off my head. As much as I was appreciating the warmth, I also felt foolish being so wrapped up.

The nurse grinned. "I am so happy that your temperature is coming up again. It was dangerous having your temperature so low. I also just told your husband that the other two people have been released and will soon be leaving. A big black man is taking them home."

"So they are alright?" I said.

"Yes, they are. Like you, we brought their temperature up slowly so that it wasn't too much of a shock to their system. However, they both have core temperatures of 98.6 degrees and are looking forward to getting home and having showers."

"I don't blame them. I'd like a shower as well."

The nurse looked sympathetic. "It's not safe for you to have a shower yet. It could warm you too fast and affect your heart as the cold blood was forced from your arms and legs inward. I'm going to get you a warm drink again. It will help heat your body." She smiled again. "The good news is, though, that your temperature is coming up. After I bring you a warmed drink, I'm going off shift." She turned to leave, and then turned back to me. "We don't actually allow people to share a bed", she said. "However, I realize that it is a good idea for you emotionally right now. Your husband told me a little about what happened to you, and I know that I would need a cuddle as well if I was in your shoes. I have put a note on your chart to allow your husband to stay in your bed, but if the next nurse asks your husband to move he will have to do so."

Tears came to my eyes in gratitude. "Thank you so much."

The nurse smiled. "Thank your husband. He had to do some fast talking with both the doctor and me to be allowed to remain there." She patted my foot and walked out of the cubicle.

I sniffled as I fought back tears. "Did you get any sleep at all?"

"No. I just enjoyed cuddling you."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Just like you needed the sleep, I needed the cuddle. The nurse just said to move you slowly so that we don't force the cold inwards."

The doctor came into the room. "I'm glad that you are awake. Your temperature is coming up nicely, and your heart rate is better. I'm going to recommend some unconventional treatment, and I'd like to start it before I go off shift in twenty minutes."

"What's that?" I said.

"I'd like to see you lie on your left side and have your husband take off all his clothes except his skivvies. I'd like him to lie under the blankets and cuddle into your back. The skin-on-skin cuddle will heat you up faster, and will allow you to get some emotional comfort. Lying on your left side will take some pressure of the blood vessels going to the baby, and by lying with your husband's front to your back, we'll still be able to get access to the different monitors in case you fall asleep."

Tears of gratitude came to my eyes again. "Thank you", I said.

"I talked to the doctor about the problems with your blood pressure", said Ranger.

"When you were admitted your blood pressure was far too low. As you warmed up, your blood pressure became dangerously high", said the doctor. "However, although it is still high, it is coming down. I recommend some very quiet days over the next little while. Your husband told me that you have another obstetrician's appointment on Friday, and he can check your blood pressure again. I will send the report of this hospital visit to him so that he knows what it was when you came in."

"I also talked to the doctor about hypothermia in pregnancy", said Ranger.

"We have warmed you gradually. Other people who have experienced hypothermia while pregnant have delivered healthy babies, so I don't think there will be any problems with the baby. We have had a fetal monitor on you the whole time, and the baby appears to be doing well in there. I really don't think there is any cause for worry."

"I also asked the doctor about being hit on the head while pregnant."

"Having a mild concussion, which is what we decided that you have based on the symptoms you were presenting when you were admitted, is not dangerous to the baby. Even if you had a severe concussion, it would not be dangerous to the baby. I have ordered some imaging done on your head as soon as your core temperature stabilizes. Your symptoms were a little confusing because your disorientation and confusion could have been from either the bump on your head or the hypothermia. Some imaging will tell us if your brain has swollen. I have also ordered an ultrasound, more for your own comfort than because I think it is necessary. I know that you are worried about the baby, and I think seeing the baby happy and kicking will be good for your own mental state."

"I can feel the baby kicking in me."

"That's good. Just be glad that they didn't stun you to knock you out. That could have caused you to miscarry. Do you have any questions?"

"No", I said.

"Okay."

The nurse walked in with some warmed juice, and Ranger got out of the bed carefully and held the cup of juice to my lips. I drank it all down and smiled at him. He still looked worried. "I'll be okay", I said.

Ranger smiled, but he didn't look any less worried. He stripped off his shirt and shoes and socks and pants until he was standing in his boxer briefs. The nurse and doctor both sucked in a deep breath as they looked at him, and I could see why. If I hadn't been so damn cold, I would have been impressed as well. Even though I got to see him without clothes every day, he was still an impressive sight to see.

The nurse and doctor were professional, however, after that first intake of air. They both helped me move to my side and adjusted me so that I wasn't disturbing any of the monitors. Then they held the blankets back so that Ranger could get in and, when he was lying smack dab against my back, they tucked the blankets around our shoulders. The doctor looked at the monitor as the blood pressure cuff took another automatic reading. "That's great", she said. "By having your husband beside you, your blood pressure is already going down."

I smiled sleepily. Ranger always had been a calming influence in my life. "I'll order another warmed drink of apple juice in about an hour", she said, "and in the meantime, get some sleep. You haven't had much in the last twenty-four hours, and the ordeal you've been through will make you more tired than you would be normally." I shut my eyes and felt Ranger's body relax, and I tumbled into sleep as I heard Ranger sigh and fall asleep himself.

About an hour later, I woke up to Ranger and Morelli talking quietly. I was still lying on my side and Ranger was still cuddled into me. I felt warmer than I had since before I had gone into the freezer, so I thought the idea of having Ranger cuddle into me was inspired.

"Hey", I said as I opened my eyes.

Morelli looked at me with relief. "You can't be doing that to me", he said. "You can't be scaring me like that."

I smiled, but instantly tensed up. That attitude, that I had done something purposely to upset him, was the main reason we had broken up.

"It wasn't my fault", I said.

"It's never your fault, cupcake. That's the problem. Things just happen to you, and you have to be careful, not only for you but for the baby. I'm just glad they didn't stun you. The doctor said that kind of electrical charge could have killed the baby and honestly, we just got lucky that they were body snatchers and were not prepared to capture someone. If they had been, they might have had a stun gun on them."

"I know."

"So what happened? Step me through things. I left you in the parking lot and then what?"

I told him what had happened, from the moment that he had left us to the moment that Ranger had broken through the door. "Are they right in that they cannot be charged for dismembering body parts?" I said. "It was pretty gruesome."

"They are right. There is a bit of a gray area in the legislation right now, and according to the legislation", said Joe, "they are able to chop up any body part that has been donated to them and sell it for profit. The company that is working out of that location is called AnatSci Inc., and we need more information about them. I have to look into the various funeral homes, but I suspect that they have been paying funeral costs in exchange for bodies to dissect and sell. As I said, that is not illegal. However, as they said, digging up corpses is. I have done a cursory search of the heads in the freezer, and there were three that I recognized. The crime scene team will have to run each of the heads and check them for identities to see if the bodies were donated legally or dug up illegally."

"God, I'm glad that isn't my job", I said. "I've had enough of dismembered bodies for a lifetime."

"I can imagine", said Morelli. "I remember the horror of being locked in a freezer truck with a dead person in a barrel and a dead person on the floor, and that was bad enough." When I had first started as a bounty hunter, Joe had been charged with murder and I was helping him clear his name. However, I needed to bring him in to the station to get my body receipt to get my portion of the bail bond fee. When I found the proof to clear his name, I handcuffed him inside cube van and drove the truck back to the station, and dropped him off with the proof that he was innocent. Although he was mad at the time, he had seemed to have forgiven me for locking him in a truck with a couple of dead people since.

"Can I get you to run a search on AnatSci?" said Morelli. "We could use whatever you dig up, especially on the financials of the company."

"Sure", I said. "I'd be happy to."

"Talk to Miguel about it", said Ranger. "Steph is not doing the research work. That sounds like something in Dirk's wheelhouse anyway, but Steph has been recommended to have some very quiet days for the next few days, and researching the company that had just kidnapped her is not something that she will be doing."

"That makes sense", said Morelli.

"But…" I said.

"No, babe. The obstetrician last Friday put you on sick leave to try to get your blood pressure down. He is afraid that it will affect the baby. The doctor that was on duty overnight said that your blood pressure was even higher than it was on Friday, and she recommended several very quiet days. Researching this company is not giving you the time to rest and recover that you need."

"But…"

"No buts, babe. As your employer, I'm handing the work to Miguel to portion out. As your husband, I'm putting my foot down and forcing you to take care of yourself. And as the person who found you unconscious, lying on a pile of dead bodies and half dead yourself, I need you to have some quiet days." He caught his breath and said quietly, "I can't take much more, babe."

I could feel the tension in his body and the way that he was holding me a little too tight, and I knew how close to the edge he was. "Okay", I said.

Ranger gave a sigh of relief. "Thank you", he said.


	15. Chapter 15

The nurse walked in a few minutes later. She sucked in a breath when she saw Morelli. Joe, of course, didn't notice. He had always been as oblivious to women's attention as Ranger was. She took my temperature. "You're almost there", she said.

"What's the temperature?" said Ranger.

"97.6", she said. She looked at the readings for my blood pressure and wrote down the results, and she looked at the readings on the heart monitor.

"What is the treatment plan?" said Morelli.

"We're still pumping in warmed saline", said the nurse, "and I'll be back in a few minutes with some warmed apple juice to drink. I'll also bring some hot oatmeal with lots of sugar on it, which will help bring up her temperature as well. When her temperature is back in the normal range, she'll be going for imaging to see if there is swelling in her brain from the knock to her head, and imaging to see that the baby is alright."

"Is there any concern that the baby isn't alright?" said Morelli as his face paled.

The nurse smiled. "Not at all. However, Stephanie is concerned that the baby isn't alright and we want to reassure her that the baby is fine. The doctor thought that being concerned about the baby would not help keep her blood pressure in a normal range, and we are trying to lower it as much as we can."

"What is her blood pressure?" said Ranger.

"It is slowly coming down, but the last reading was 150/92. That should, however, come down as her body warms up a bit more."

I closed my eyes as a wave of overwhelming fatigue and helplessness crashed over me. As tears welled up, I sniffled and tried to stop them from overflowing.

Morelli talked to the nurse for a minute or two longer before she smiled and said that she would get me a drink and a breakfast. She left the room again, and Ranger said, "150/92. That's why you need to have a few quiet days before your next appointment", he said.

"What is the target range?" said Morelli.

"Ninety to one-twenty in the high number, and sixty to eighty in the low number", said Ranger. "Steph has been consistently having readings in the one-thirties for the past month. This could mean that she has developed preeclampsia, a condition that could have lasting impacts upon both Steph and the baby."

Morelli paled again. "What could happen to the baby?"

"The baby could be born underweight and preterm as the baby struggles to get enough oxygen and food. The chances for the baby being a stillborn go up. If the baby was more developed, they would probably induce labor. However, the baby isn't developed enough to do that."

"What could it do to Steph?"

"Her organs could be damaged", said Ranger. "Her chances of heart disease or high blood pressure later in life go up. It's a very serious condition. If it got even worse and developed into eclampsia, Steph could go into seizures or a coma."

I sobbed out a breath, and Ranger pulled me closer into his body.

"Fuck", said Morelli.

I turned my head into the pillow and sobbed. "Babe", said Ranger as he rubbed my belly. "We are taking the steps to ensure that this doesn't happen. I have total confidence that you and the baby are going to be fine. But it is something that we have to be aware of and that we have to do what we can to control. And that means that you have to go on sick leave. You know this. Going through your excitement last night just made things worse, and it's even more imperative that you take the time off work to rest and try to get better."

I shuddered in a breath. "Okay", I said. "Can I at least get updates from Morelli on how the investigation is going?"

Ranger hesitated and thought about that. "That would probably be good for you to know that the investigation is progressing, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"Okay, but Morelli should only tell you when things have been done rather than telling you about things that still need to be investigated."

"I can do that", said Morelli. "I should probably go. I have three people that I need to find to charge with attempted murder and body snatching. I look forward to charging them." He swiped the tears from my face and kissed me on my forehead. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

I nodded, and Morelli looked at Ranger. He nodded once, and I could feel Ranger nod in return. I didn't know what that meant in man-speak, but in my world it meant that Morelli was asking Ranger to look after me, and Ranger was replying that he would.

Morelli left the cubicle and passed the nurse as she was walking into the room. She put the warmed apple juice and oatmeal on the table and swung the table over the bed. "You must be hungry", she said. She helped me roll over in a way that didn't disturb the monitors.

"I am, a bit", I said. Just then, I heard Ranger's stomach growl. "You're hungry as well."

"More than hunger, I desperately have to use the washroom", said Ranger with a quirk of his lips. "I feel like I am floating."

"Down the corridor at the end of the hall", said the nurse. "I think the maximum benefit from having you lie next to Stephanie has occurred. She doesn't need you to lie next to her any longer."

Ranger smiled. "You say that like I was doing her a favor. In fact, she was doing me a favor. I needed to cuddle her badly, and the skin-on-skin contact went a long way to making me feel better."

The nurse put down the sides of the bed, and Ranger rolled out and straightened up. The woman sucked in a breath, but again, Ranger didn't appear to notice. "Do me a favor", she said. "Get dressed before you walk down the hall to the washroom. There is a woman with a heart condition down the hall, and if she saw you her heart might stop working."

Ranger laughed. I think he thought she was kidding. However, I looked at him and realized that she was telling the truth.

The nurse turned to me. "You are a very lucky woman", she said.

I smiled and nodded. I knew how lucky I was.

Ranger ignored us and pulled on his pants and shirt and socks, and slid his feet into his boots. He must have really needed to go, as he didn't take the time to do up his boots before leaving the cubicle for the washroom. A few minutes later, he returned. "Better?" I said.

Ranger smiled. "Yeah", he said. "I wasn't sure if I was going to make it."

I laughed.

"Do you want me to see if I am allowed to pick you up a peppermint tea?"

I smiled, and Ranger dug into his coat pocket for his wallet. He put it in his back pocket, gave me a kiss, and walked to the central desk. He talked to the nurse for a moment before leaving the ER.

I immediately missed him when he was gone. I drank my juice and ate my oatmeal. The nurse came in to check my readings. "Your blood pressure is going up again", she said. "Why do you think it is going up? What has changed?"

"My husband has left to get himself something to eat", I said. "That's the only thing that has changed, but that makes sense. He has a way of making me feel safe and calm."

"We'll watch to see what happens when he returns then."

"What is it up to?"

"155/94."

"I'll try to relax."

"Have you done a 24-hour urine test?"

"I was supposed to have done it yesterday. I started at seven and did it all day, but after eleven last night I was out of the house and not near my bottle. When I was captured I went once in the freezer and the catheter caught some urine. It wasn't much, but it wasn't captured in my bottle."

"Talk to your doctor about it. You might have captured enough to run the test."

"Okay."

The nurse patted me on the shoulder. "Try to relax, and we'll keep our eye on things when your husband returns."

I closed my eyes and drifted until I heard Ranger's low voice outside my cubicle. I looked outside. Ranger was handing over a container of donut holes to the nurse at the central desk. She was smiling, so I thought that maybe donut holes were a good treat for the staff.

Ranger carried in a tray containing a yogurt parfait, a large coffee, a large peppermint tea, and two paper bags. Ranger handed a bag to me and kept a bag for himself. His bag contained a bran muffin. As I opened my bag, I hoped that I had something better than a bran muffin. I mean, bran muffins were good, but I needed happy food and bran muffins weren't happy food. They were healthy food, and in all honesty I didn't think a food could be both.

I looked in my bag and smiled. Ranger had bought me a sprinkle donut. I thought sprinkle donuts were the ultimate in happy food. First, you have all that sugary and fatty goodness. Put that pastry in your mouth and you were sure to be feeling better by the time you finished the donut. But then, in addition to the sugary and fatty goodness, you had all the colored sprinkles on top of the donut. Just looking at the donut just made you feel happy, and this time was no different. I looked at the donut as I appreciated the colored sprinkles, and I smiled as I anticipated the first bite of the heavenly goodness. "Thank you", I said. "How did you know that I seriously needed some happy food?"

Ranger thought about smiling. "The doctor said that you were cleared for eating sweets and, in fact, she suggested that I add sugar to your tea." I made a face. "That's what I thought. So I compromised. I bought you the sugar and the tea, and I thought that you could eat them both and we could pretend they were combined."

I laughed as I looked at the donut one more time, then took a bite and chewed it slowly and swallowed. "God, that's good", I said. I took a sip of my tea, and then took another bite of my donut.

Even though I tried to eat slowly and even though Ranger had started eating before me, I was finished long before Ranger. I looked at the wrapping for the donut sadly. It had been seriously good. I took a sip of tea, and Ranger threw my wrappings and his garbage into the bin in the corner of the room.

The nurse came into the room and looked at the blood pressure reading. "Your blood pressure came down again", she said. "It is as we suspected. Your husband keeps you calm and reduces your blood pressure."

I nodded. Ranger looked surprised. "What is her blood pressure now?"

"149/90."

"That's not a huge difference."

"It was 155/94 when you were gone. This is a huge difference", said the nurse.

"It's going to go up in a moment", I said. "I have to call my mother."

"I'll call", said Ranger. He knew that I loved my mother very much, but she got overly worried about things and, because she did, she tended to become a little too dramatic when something went wrong. It made it hard to deal with because, in all honesty, things went wrong in my life quite often.

Ranger also knew that I had a hard time dealing with the dramatics. I liked a peaceful life, and having someone say, 'for the love of God, be careful' wasn't good for one's peace of mind. Ranger, with his quiet way of handling things, was like a breath of fresh air. Ranger, like me, knew that my blood pressure would rise if I had to talk to my mother. However, while I knew my mother would be dramatic about what happened, I knew that I could always count on my mother for support when things really went wrong.

My ex, Dickie, was one of those people who whined and bellyached whenever he was a little sick but, when he accepted being sick and wasn't whinging about it? You knew that was when something was really wrong. My mother was like that. She got dramatic over the smallest thing but, when the chips were really down, she would be the best support that you could ever imagine. But this? I was essentially okay, which means that my mother would be overly upset. And that would in turn upset me.

And that wasn't even including my grandmother. My grandmother was a good person who had a wicked imagination. She lived for gossip and for anything that lifted her out of the mundane day-to-day events of her life. She got an unusual thrill out of all the negative things that happened in my life, as it gave her something to think about and it gave her a piece of gossip to spread – both good things according to my grandmother. So while my mother worried if something traumatic happened to me, my grandmother treated it as a thrill and a gift that was meant to be treasured.

And treasure it she did. She loved spreading the news as to what happened to me and, if she didn't think the news was spicy enough, she embellished it a little to make the story more interesting. When my car blew up the last time, my grandmother told so many people that my cars always blew up that no one would park next to me in the Burg. They would all park at least one block over and walk to their destination. That was saying something. We were from New Jersey, and we didn't walk for anything. When I killed my last person, my grandmother told everyone that I was a murderer and that they should watch out for me so that I didn't murder them in their sleep. People would cross the street when they saw me, and children would cry in fear. When Ranger and I got married, we had told my grandmother that we didn't want anyone to know. The gossip had been eating away at her since. I had recently heard that she had told everyone that I had been gang raped and that was why I was pregnant. It was another mess that my grandmother made that I would have to deal with.

Generally, I understood why my grandmother liked to make up gossip so much. Her life was boring and dull, and nothing exciting happened. By making up things about me, Grandma was able to make herself the center of attention amongst her friends. She was able to bring a little excitement to her life.

But while I understood my grandmother's need for excitement, I didn't actually appreciate being the star of her stories. My stories were shocking enough and didn't need embellishment, and I hated walking around Trenton and running into people who have been told that I have been on life support or some such nonsense.

I looked at Ranger as he pulled out his phone. "You're my hero", I said.

Ranger's lips quirked up as he dialed my mother. "Hi, Helen", he said. "It's Ranger." He listened for a moment. "That's not entirely true. Steph was waiting at the cemetery to talk to a witness when she saw a couple of men carry that witness to a van. When the van started up, she followed them. When the van got to its final destination, she parked in the street." He paused. "Yes, she was found in the freezer. The men realized that she had been following them and approached her, knocked her out, and brought her into the industrial unit. Her witness and her bodyguard were also captured. The three of them were locked in a freezer until we were able to come and get them." He paused. "I knew that she was in trouble and that she was there because I had been on the phone with her when she was taken." He listened and looked up at me. He mouthed the question as to whether I wanted to talk to her, and I sighed and nodded. "You can talk to her now", said Ranger, "but I'm not going to let her talk long as she is still very tired and I'd rather see her get some sleep." He listened for a moment longer and shook his head. "Here she is." He put it on speakerphone.

"Hi, Mom", I said.

"I heard that you were dead, Steph, and then I tried to call you and you didn't answer."

"I didn't answer because I was a little busy and couldn't. However, you are talking to me now."

"I heard you had to be brought into the hospital in an ambulance."

"I was. I was a little cold. But I am alright now."

"I heard that you were suffering from hypothermia."

"I was. However, my core temperature is now almost back to normal."

"I overheard your grandmother telling someone that you got so cold your nose broke off like a chunk of ice."

I sighed. "My nose is still firmly intact."

The sphygmomanometer inflated automatically, as it had been every ten minutes since I had arrived in the hospital, and after it released the air and got the reading, the nurse came running into the cubicle. She took another reading as I said to my mother, "Mom, can you try to reel Grandma in? I don't want people asking me whether I've had plastic surgery done on my nose and that's why it is firmly in place."

The nurse turned to us. "Get off the phone", she whispered.

"I'm sorry, Helen, but it looks like the doctor is about to come into the room", said Ranger. "We have to go, but we just wanted to let you know that Steph is alright and that she will soon be released from the hospital. I'll call you again when we are at home."

"Okay. Thank you for calling."

Ranger hung up the phone and the nurse looked relieved. "Steph's blood pressure spiked up above 160/95 when you were on the phone with her mom", she said to Ranger.

I smiled sadly. "Just think how high it would have spiked if I had been on the majority of the call", I said. "As it was, Ranger did most of the talking and I only joined in at the last minute."

"Thank goodness", said the nurse. "Try to relax", she said. She turned and left the cubicle.

"What was it about the call to your parents that caused your blood pressure to elevate?" said Ranger.

"I always hate upsetting my family. First, there is my mother. I don't like worrying my mother and I find that, whenever something happens like this, I can almost hear my mother saying that Valerie is the better daughter because nothing like this ever happens to Valerie. I feel like I have failed when I talk to my mother. She probably doesn't mean to make me feel bad. I'm just being overly sensitive. Years of hearing comparisons between Val and me make me feel like a failure when my life isn't as perfect as Val's."

"Do you think Val's life is perfect? By the sound of it, Val wouldn't agree."

"I know, but my mom has always compared me to Val. From what Val has said, she always compared Val to me as well. I hadn't realized that my mother was doing that."

"How does that make you feel?"

"Kind of sad. I wish my mother would just let us be, warts and all, and not compare us to each other. We are different people and have different strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure my mother doesn't even realize that she is doing it."

"I'm sure. Your mother cares deeply about you and Val. She would never ever do anything to willingly hurt you."

"And that's not including my grandmother."

"She upsets you?"

"I hate how my grandmother makes up stories about me. I choose to laugh about it, and when you step out of the scenario and look in, it is funny. I choose to look at the funny side. But if I let myself get involved it isn't so funny. I mean, she's telling people that my nose broke off in the cold. It's kind of funny, but when people come up to talk to me and are inspecting my nose to see if they can see the crack marks, and when people ask me whether nose reconstruction surgery hurt, it isn't so funny. The initial claim that my grandmother made is often humorous; the resulting fallout from those claims is not. So, yeah, it gets me upset to think that my grandmother has started another rumor about me, and it gets me upset to know that I'm going to have to deal with the shit storm coming my way because of it."

"You can't sigh and say, there she goes again?"

"I used to be able to, but now I have a hard time doing that. People say that you should always respect your elders. But sometimes I'd just like to shake her and tell her to smarten up."

"Why don't you?"

"It wouldn't do any good. She doesn't listen at the best of times, and when she has a particularly juicy bit of gossip in her hands, it isn't the best of times."


	16. Chapter 16

The doctor sent us for imaging. The MRI to look at my head was boring, but Ranger and I both enjoyed the ultrasound to look at the baby. "Do you know the sex of the baby?" said the technician as she moved the transducer around my abdomen.

"Yes", I said. "We were told the baby is a girl."

The technician took pictures and measurements. "She looks like she'll be a beautiful baby girl", she said. "She is very active right now. Have you been able to feel her, Dad?"

"Yes", said Ranger. "I'm starting to feel her more and more as she gets a little bigger."

"She looks like she's a very strong little girl and, judging by how she is kicking, I think that she'll be a soccer player when she is born."

"Or maybe she'll be into martial arts like her sister", I said.

"This is your second?" said the technician.

"She'll be my first and my husband's second", I said.

"Is your other daughter happy about the pregnancy?"

"Very much so", said Ranger. "She lives in Florida, and she wants to come up for the entire summer so that she can spend some time with the baby."

I smiled. The fact that Julie wanted to come made me very happy.

"To all intents and purposes, the baby looks happy and healthy to me", she said, "but I will get a doctor in to review the ultrasound results with you to confirm that."

She froze the screen on a picture of Tia and left the room. A few minutes later the doctor came in and looked at the measurements. "Haven't I seen you here before?" she said as she looked over at us.

I groaned. "I was shot twice in December and although I wasn't hurt more than bone bruises and internal bleeding, we were very concerned as to the health of the baby. I came for a few ultrasounds around that time. I also came last week to ensure the baby was developing properly."

"I remember that! I'm sorry I didn't put you together with the couple from last week."

"That's okay", I said. "I'm sure you see hundreds of people in a week."

The doctor laughed as she started to review the results and look at the baby again. "I see about six to ten people an hour, and I work twelve-hour shifts four days a week. You're right in that I see a lot of people each week. So why were you sent over to us this time?"

"I was locked in a freezer for a couple of hours", I said. "I had hypothermia."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Warmer, thankfully. Even so, I'll be glad to get home and have a hot shower."

The doctor smiled. "I bet." She paused for a moment. "You're the couple that had high blood pressure, weren't you?"

"We are", said Ranger.

"I have high blood pressure", I said. "Ranger's blood pressure is fine."

The doctor laughed as Ranger said, "I don't know about that. After suspecting that you were locked in the freezer and then we couldn't open the door, my blood pressure went up very fast."

"You couldn't open the door?" said the doctor.

"No. We had to blow it open."

The doctor looked confused, so I said, "C-4", in explanation.

"Wherever did you get C-4?" asked the doctor in surprise. "I mean, it's not something you can pick up at the local Home Depot."

Ranger laughed. "There are a number of military stores where you can get it", he said. "It is actually much easier to get than you might suspect."

"That's scary", said the doctor. She finished looking at the screen and handed a tissue to Ranger. "The baby still looks good. She's going to be on the small side of average, but she looks healthy and whole and happy in there. As far as I can tell, there is no reason to worry."

"Thank you", I said.

"I'll see you when your next calamity happens", she said with a grin. "I never thought that I'd be able to develop a continuing relationship with my patients when I decided to go into this branch of medicine. This is kind of nice."

Ranger and I laughed.

Ranger helped me off the examining bed and over to the wheelchair. "I will be very happy to go home", I said as I transferred from the wheelchair to the bed again. I was still shaky, even though I had eaten and I had warmed up to a temperature of 98.4. The doctor had been happy with that.

The nurse came in and hooked me up to the monitors again. "Will I be able to go home soon?" I said. My patience was wearing thin. I really wanted a shower and to sleep in my own bed.

"That will be something that you have to talk to the doctor about", said the nurse. "She will be in to see you in just a few minutes." She turned around and left the room, and I lay back on the bed and sighed.

"Soon, babe", said Ranger. He looked at me in sympathy. "You have a great bruise on the side of your head." He gently pushed my hair away from my face. "Your bruise starts in your hair but extends into your cheek."

"I know. It hurts whenever I smile."

Ranger thought about smiling. "That must be hard for you then, because you smile more than almost anyone that I have ever met."

My eyes welled up with tears. "Thank you", I said as I sniffled. "That was a lovely thing to say."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry."

Ranger looked upset with himself, and I took his hand and kissed it. "I'm crying in a good way", I said. "I just feel like my emotions are a little close to the surface right now, and things are squishing out like a jelly doughnut."

"Like a jelly doughnut?"

"It doesn't matter if you want to keep the jelly in the middle, when you take a bite the jelly comes squishing out."

"Okay?" Ranger looked like I had just gone cracked, and I could see his point. I thought, for the first time since I had killed Pete Brodie, that I was losing control and was about to break into a million pieces.

I blew out an unhappy breath, and Ranger smoothed the hair away from my face again. "You okay, babe?" he said.

"It just hit me that I could have died", I said.

"I know." Ranger looked equally as unhappy with the thought as I was.

"The baby could have died."

"Yes."

The blood pressure cuff filled with air once more and, when it had deflated, a nurse came into the cubicle again. It was a different nurse than we had been working with before. "I don't know what you were talking about", she said, "but you might want to shelve that conversation."

"Why's that?" I said as I swiped tears from my face.

"Your blood pressure is up at 150/87 again."

I burst into tears, big ugly tears. Ranger stood beside the bed and I rolled so that I could bury my wet face into his hip, as he smoothed the hair away from my face and let me cry. The nurse looked at Ranger in surprise. "What did I say?"

Ranger continued to smooth my hair away from my face in comfort. "Since Steph got pregnant she has been kicked, stabbed, kidnapped, held at gunpoint and shot. She has almost lost the baby a few times, and now her blood pressure is high and there is a different danger in front of her. It has been a little too much this time around, and she's having trouble rolling with the punches."

"I see", said the nurse faintly.

"She'll be okay", said Ranger. "She just needs a moment."

The nurse patted me on the shoulder and left the room, and I shuddered in a breath and tried to get myself under control. Several minutes later, the doctor walked into the room. "Okay, this is what we know", she said. "Your concussion is worse than we thought. There is some brain swelling, and there are a whole host of symptoms that you are having that I wasn't sure whether they were a facet of the hypothermia and what you went through or the concussion. It is probably a bit of both, to tell you the truth."

"What kinds of symptoms?" said Ranger.

"Emotionality, headache, slurred speech, fatigue…some of those symptoms, like the slurred speech, have resolved themselves."

"The fatigue may also be because she hasn't slept in more than half hour segments all night", said Ranger.

"That's true. And the emotionality may be due to what she has gone through as well, her pregnancy, or even the fact that Stephanie hasn't slept much in the last twenty-four hours." She paused. "However, although I know that these are potential reasons for the symptoms, I am also concerned. The concussion isn't little and, mixed with the high blood pressure, I'd like to admit Stephanie for twenty-four hours for observation." I started hyperventilating. "Stephanie", said the doctor, "I'm not happy with the numbers that I am seeing. If your blood pressure doesn't come down, your doctor will have to put you on medication. We have to do what we can to reduce your hypertension."

"Staying in the hospital isn't the way to reduce my blood pressure", I said.

The doctor smiled. "If it was just your blood pressure, I'd send you home. And if it was just your concussion, I'd send you home. But it is the two problems together that I'm worried about, and I would like to keep you here for observation. Tomorrow we'll run another MRI to see if the swelling has gone down, and we'll keep monitoring your blood pressure. Don't worry. You'll be going home soon enough. I'll arrange a room now."

I looked at Ranger as the doctor left. "I'm sorry", I said. "You have so much to do at work. If you want to go back to Rangeman, you could get a good sleep and then do the work for the office."

"No way. I'm staying with you. If I left it up to you, you'd sweet talk your way out of the hospital and thumb a ride home, just so that you could have a shower and go to bed."

I swiped the last of the tears from my face. "You have to admit that our bed is pretty fantastic."

Ranger smiled. "Yes, it is." He leaned down and kissed me. "I love you, okay?" he said softly. "And you aren't getting rid of me so easily. I'm here, and I'm here to stay."

I reached up and smoothed my hands over his five o'clock shadow. As his whiskers rasped my fingers, I pulled him down into another kiss. "I love you too."


	17. Chapter 17

I was moved into a room about a half hour later. Ranger arranged for Tank to bring him his laptop, and he set up the computer on the rolling table beside me as I napped. A few hours later I woke up to hear my mother's and grandmother's voice. I looked up at them. My grandmother looked excited and my mother looked upset. I looked over at Ranger, and he mouthed 'I'm sorry' to me.

"I thought you said it was nothing", said my mother. "I thought you said that you just had a headache. You have a bad bruise over half your face."

"Apparently the concussion is worse than we thought", said Ranger. The blood pressure cuff filled with air, and I wondered how high the reading would be this time.

"How did they know it was as bad as it was?" said my grandmother.

"They took an MRI of my head", I said, "and they saw that my brain was swollen."

My grandmother sat down on the chair to the side of my bed and placed her purse in her lap. "Tell me everything that happened." She leaned forward in the chair and looked like she was just about to learn a particularly juicy bit of gossip.

"I was in my car watching a van . I knew that our snitch was tailing the van's owners. However, as I watched the van, its owners came up to it carrying our snitch. When they left the area, I followed them. They stopped in an industrial park and moved the snitch into the building and I called Ranger. While I was talking to him, the two men came up to the car and demanded that we get out. When we didn't, they pulled us out and hit us with a tire iron. When we woke up, we were in the building. Amelia and Simon were in the freezer and, when I discovered that, I went into the freezer to rescue them. However, one of the kidnappers found the three of us there and locked us in the freezer. It took Ranger over an hour to find us."

"It was just lucky that you found her", said my mother.

"How cold were you?" asked my grandmother. "I've been telling everyone that your nose broke off with the cold."

"My nose is still firmly in place", I said. "I was lucky and I didn't even have any frostbite. My core temperature just dropped."

"You need to stay home and look after your baby", said my mother. "How are you ever going to have a healthy baby if you go gallivanting around and don't take care of yourself?"

Tears came to my eyes. Ranger looked at me sympathetically. "This wasn't really her fault", he said. "She was just sitting in her car, talking on the phone with me. She didn't ask to get kidnapped and thrown in a freezer."

"Why did they want you on ice?" said my grandmother. She moved her dentures around in her mouth in excitement.

"I'm sorry, Grandma, but that is a case that is in front of Joe right now, and I can't talk about it."

Grandma looked disappointed, then brightened. "This was the case that you were helping Joe on the other night, right? The one that you had to leave in the middle of dinner for?"

I smiled. "Yes."

"I didn't know that you were helping the police in their investigations again."

"There is no 'again' about it, Grandma. I was a bounty hunter and I had helped the TPD while retrieving skips in the past. I have also done research for the police department on the behalf of Rangeman, but I haven't done any investigation on behalf of the police department in the past."

"But you were this time?"

"Not really. I was just following the van to see where they took our snitch. I was then sitting at the curb to watch what was happening . I wasn't doing any investigating. I just wanted to make sure that our snitch was okay and I had been planning on leaving as soon as Joe arrived."

"Uh-hunh", said Grandma. "That won't make a good story. You don't mind if I embellish it a bit, do you?"

The blood pressure cuff inflated again, and Ranger looked at the monitor. I glanced at his face. He did not look pleased, and I wanted to know what the reading was – and then I wondered if I really wanted to know.

"Actually, I do mind, Grandma", I said. "I don't need to meet people in the street and have to tell them that, in fact, aliens didn't abduct me and freeze me so that they could run experiments."

"Oh, that's a good one", said Grandma. "That's believable as well."

"What's so believable about aliens running experiments?" said my mother.

"Well, I'd believe it", said Grandma.

"Steph appreciates you coming in, but I want to make sure she catches up on her sleep", said Ranger. "With being up most of the night, she's a little fatigued."

"But…" said Grandma, and I knew that she wouldn't leave willingly. There was still so much more information that she wanted to get.

I faked a yawn, and my mother looked at me worriedly. "Your head hurts a lot, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "It does. And they can't give me any of the good drugs because of the pregnancy."

"Try to rest as much as you can. I was reading the other day on how concussions can lead to brain disorders later in life. I would hate for you to develop early-onset Alzheimer's or something because of this concussion."

"Ooh, that's good", said Grandma.

"I'm not coming down with early-onset Alzheimer's."

"But you could be", said Grandma. "If you were coming down with early-onset Alzheimer's, you wouldn't have all your faculties and wouldn't be able to notice that you were suffering from the symptoms."

"Grandma, do not tell everyone that I have Alzheimer's."

"But you could."

"I do not."

"You wouldn't know."

"Grandma, do NOT tell everyone I have Alzheimer's. And reverse what you said about my nose falling off. I don't want people coming up to me to ask me how the reconstruction surgery went."

"People are so inquisitive these days. You can't blame them for being curious."

"I can when it was you behind the comments to start off with, and it wouldn't be the other people that I would blame. It would be you." I glared at my grandmother, and she didn't even look abashed.

I looked at my mother, and she nodded. "I'll try, Steph. But you know how impossible it is to reel her in."

"Try", said Ranger. He turned to Grandma. "Edna, you are not to be making up stories. I don't want to hear about noses broken off or neurological disorders or the prediction that the baby has frostbite or any other story that you could come up with."

"The baby has frostbite?" said Grandma. Her eyes began to sparkle.

"NO!" said Ranger and I together.

My mother looked at us apologetically as the nurse came in and looked at the blood pressure monitor. He scrolled through the numbers for the last two hours. "I think that Stephanie should rest now", said the nurse. He glanced at Ranger and me, and I looked at Ranger. He looked thankful.

"Would you like to come back to the house with us?" said Grandma to Ranger.

"Ranger is staying here", I said. "He keeps me calm."

"I could stay as well", said Grandma as she sat down again. "I keep you calm too."

"I'm kicking everyone out except Stephanie's husband", said the nurse. "The doctor will be by soon, and he'll want to see that Stephanie has slept some more before he arrives."

Ranger went to my mother and grandmother. "Thank you for coming", he said. He stooped and gave my mother and my grandmother kisses on their cheeks.

The nurse stood sentinel as they looked at Ranger, a little befuddled. The nurse smiled. "Have a good day", he said.

My mother recovered first. She kissed Ranger on his cheek, then came over to me and kissed me on my cheek as well. "Sleep well, Steph", she said.

My grandmother looked quite set in her seat. "I'll just stay with Steph. That way I can hear what the doctor says."

"No, Grandma", I said. "It would be very boring for you anyway. I'll just be sleeping. Besides, you have all those people to talk to in order to reverse the news that my nose broke off in the cold."

The nurse snorted. "That's not even possible", he said.

"People believed it", said Grandma. "I can't help it if people believed something that wasn't even possible."

My blood pressure cuff filled with air again and, as it deflated, the nurse looked over at the readings. "I hope you have a good day", he said to my grandmother. "Do you need help off the chair?"

My grandmother popped to her feet. "No", she said, "I'm fully mobile."

"Come on, Ma", said my mother. She looked at the nurse looking at the monitor and the blood pressure cuff inflating and deflating, and I could tell that she knew something was up. I could also tell that she knew that we didn't want Grandma to know. "We'll call Steph and Ranger later to see how they are doing." She gave me a pointed look, and I blew out a breath. I knew what that meant. She wanted details on what was going on.

My mother was a true mother and I never had been able to pull the wool over my mother's eyes. I should have known that by now.

As my mother tugged my grandmother's arm and pulled her down the hall, Ranger turned to the nurse. "What's the damage?" he said.

"When Steph was sleeping, she was able to get her blood pressure down to 142/85. However, when her family came in her blood pressure spiked up to 160/96."

Ranger's eyes tightened in his 'not happy' look.

"I'm sorry", I said.

"It's not your fault", said the nurse. "It is just your reaction to your family coming in. Hopefully, now that they are gone your blood pressure will decrease again. From what you said, your blood pressure had been 138/85 at the doctor's office?"

"Yes", I said.

"So that's our initial goal – to get it down to that reading again. It would be great if we could get it down further, but that is our initial goal. Your obstetrician said that he would be in to see you after his office hours today. In the meantime, I'd like you to see if you could sleep more. When you sleep, lie on your left side to take the pressure off your blood vessels."

"Okay." I turned to Ranger. "As soon as my mother can get free of my grandmother, she'll call. She knows that something is up based on the nurse's and your interest in the monitor, and she wants to know what it is."

"How much do you want to tell her?"

"Might as well tell the truth. She'll find out anyway. She has the unique ability that all mothers seem to have of finding out secrets no matter how much you try to hide them. And she'll understand why we don't want my grandmother to know, but will be hurt if she finds out later that we didn't let her know what was going on."

"This is your life and your health", said the nurse. "It is your right to tell as little or as much as you like."

I looked at him and smiled sadly. "Doesn't she have the right to know, though?" I said. "Mothers, more than anyone, deserve to know when things are going wrong just as much as they deserve to know when things are going right. If we ask my mother to keep it quiet and not tell anyone other than my father, she will. She's pretty good at keeping secrets."

"That's your decision to make", said Ranger. "You have to make the decision that causes you the least amount of stress."

I didn't know how to tell the nurse or Ranger, but every decision caused me stress. There was no right or wrong answer, and no matter what I did I would feel bad.


	18. Chapter 18

I had some lunch and another sleep before the doctor came to visit me. When he arrived, Ranger was sitting on the bed beside me and we were looking at some pictures of the rooms that Amelia and I had picked out on Ranger's computer. I was going over all the features that Amelia was attracted to in each of the pictures, and Ranger was listening in rapt attention.

Dr. Wilson walked in as I reviewed Amelia's favorite paint colors. "You know", he said, "when I put you on sick leave, I did not mean that you should get locked in a freezer for a few hours."

I smiled anxiously. I hadn't been looking forward to seeing the doctor.

"What happened?" he said.

"On Sunday, the TPD called me with the request that I come out and talk to a suspect. Apparently the man told the officer that I was the only person that he'd talk to. So I met the officer and the suspect for dinner, which was good as it got me out of dinner at my parents'."

"Do you not like dinner with your parents?"

"I do, but my sister was there and she is suffering from a little jealousy lately, and everything she says to me is designed to make me feel bad. I don't want to let her know about the high blood pressure because she would tell me that I shouldn't have been a mother and that my baby was going to be born deformed or something like that."

"Preeclampsia, or even gestational hypertension, doesn't cause deformities."

"That won't matter to my sister. She will try to make me feel like an unnatural mother no matter what happens. She had five kids without any problems, so she is happy to try to stick it to me however she can."

"So you were happy to trot off to the meeting with the suspect."

"The officer is a friend of mine and I like the suspect, so between it all it was a much nicer way to spend the evening. I'm sure it was much better for my blood pressure."

"Okay. So how did you end up in the freezer?"

"The case was one where people have been digging up remains in the cemetery and stealing their bodies. The suspect had seen the felons, and he said that he would call me if he saw them again. So around eleven at night yesterday I got a call from the man and he said that he was at the cemetery and that he would tail the felons. I called the officer and drove to the cemetery to be on hand to help the person assisting us. He doesn't trust the police, but he does trust me. Anyway, I took a bodyguard with me for protection. I didn't get out of the car and the police went into the cemetery to try to find the felons and/or the person helping us. While they were in the cemetery, I saw the felons carry the person helping us out to their van and drive away. I followed them, as I knew that it was the only way that I'd be able to figure out where they were going. I tailed them to an industrial unit and parked my car to observe matters until the police showed up."

"So how did you end up in the freezer?"

"I was spotted, and the felons came and dragged me and my bodyguard from the car. They knocked us out and took us into the industrial unit to stuff us in the freezer."

"What did they want with you?"

"That is part of an ongoing police investigation, and I can't discuss it. Just suffice it to say that they wanted to kill us by freezing us."

"I, by law, am required to keep the information you give me quiet."

I sighed. "The people who took us were chopping up dead bodies to sell the body parts for medical science. Sometimes, grieving family members agree to donate their loved one's body to science. When this happens, the funeral home sends the bodies to this company for processing. However, the company was short of bodies and they had a big order for ankles coming up. Since they were short of bodies, they were digging recent buried remains up to obtain the body parts. They were especially excited to see me as they didn't have many pregnant women and they thought the fetus in utero would bring in a lot of money. But they weren't killers and didn't want to kill me outright. So they put the three of us – my informant, my bodyguard and me – into the freezer to kill us without any bloodshed."

The doctor stared at me for a moment before shaking his head. "Talking to you is like watching a soap opera. If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were making this stuff up."

I smiled. "Nope. It's all true. Unfortunately."

"Okay. Let's talk about your health and how this incident has impacted it."

I could feel Ranger tense beside me, and I lay my head on his shoulder to provide comfort to him.

"Because of the hypothermia, when you were admitted your pulse was weak and your blood pressure was low. If you had been left in that freezer much longer things would not have looked as cheery for you as they do. As you thawed out and we raised your temperature, your blood pressure spiked. That was expected. However, your blood pressure has remained consistently higher than it was when you were in my office last Friday.

"The concussion, although painful, is not a problem for the baby. It could, however, be part of the reason that your blood pressure is a bit higher. Being in pain is an upsetting thing.

"So let's talk about the spikes and falls of your blood pressure. It spiked when you talked to your family and when your family came in to visit. It again spiked when Ranger talked to your mother on the phone and explained to her what was going on, but it didn't spike as much."

"It was helpful being a bit removed from the conversation", I said. "It also helped that it was just my mother on the phone. She had called on her cell phone from the basement during my grandmother's nap so that my grandmother wouldn't hear. My grandmother has a way of embellishing situations and spreading around the altered stories as though they were accurate. This time, my grandmother told everyone that my nose broke off in the freezer, and I know that people are going to stop me in the street to ask how the reconstruction surgery went, and to inspect my nose to see if they could discern the crack marks in it."

"Was the conversation with your mother a good one?" said Dr. Wilson.

"It seemed to go well. My mother is worried, as a mother would be, about me and the baby, but she was happy to know what was going on and she agreed to keep the information secret from everyone other than my father."

"Will your father tell anyone?"

"No. My father is a pretty silent guy, and he won't tell a soul."

"Okay, so you want to keep the information secret. I would advise you, based on your reaction to your family, to avoid spending time with them. It isn't doing good things for your health to interact with your family."

I blanched. I didn't know how I was going to pull that off. Despite my reaction to them, my family was my family and family stuck together through thick and thin. Cutting them out of my life would be challenging.

"I also want to reiterate your need to avoid work", said Dr. Wilson. "You need to de-stress as much as possible. Have you had a chance to start doing yoga at all?"

"My first session was today", I said. I turned to Ranger. "I didn't cancel my appointment with Miles."

"I'll call him and apologize in a few minutes", said Ranger. "It's okay, babe. He won't mind, especially when he hears why you have missed your appointment."

"Besides, what can you do if he minds?" said the doctor. "Don't take responsibility for his feelings. Just work on your own. If he gives you a hard time, just accept it and move on."

"If he gives Steph a hard time", said Ranger, "he'll be fired. The whole point to having a trainer at Rangeman is to support our staff, and giving someone a hard time for being in the hospital is not supporting that person."

"You have a trainer on staff?" said the doctor with surprise.

"Yes", said Ranger. "Good physical condition is important for many of the positions in my company. To support that, we have a trainer on staff and offer a number of exercise classes. I require all staff to, at the very minimum, attend two self-defense sessions a week. I feel that self-defense skills are important for everybody to have, and it is a condition of employment for all staff."

"Your company sounds like an interesting place to work." He paused and looked at me. "I'd like to send you to a therapist to learn meditation. I think that you could use the skills of meditation to help you reduce your stress levels." He turned to Ranger. "Let me guess – you have therapists on staff as well?"

Ranger smiled. "A lot of our staff are former military and, as you know, vets are not known for stable mental health. I have a psychiatrist on staff, as well as a psychologist." He turned to me. "Livy would be a valuable resource for you", he said. "She works hand-in-hand with Gabriel, but meditation is one of the things that she excels in and she does a lot of teaching people how to meditate. I can help you with that as well. I had to learn it as a Ranger and often use it when I am getting ready for a mission. It helps me get my head in the game."

"Is that what you're doing when you get in touch with your Zen?" Ranger, when he was going into a situation, became very still and very focused. I called it getting in touch with his Zen, because he became very calm and his pulse rate slowed to that of a hibernating groundhog. It was impressive to watch.

Ranger smiled and nodded. "Soon, you'll be able to do it too."

"Is Livy the psychiatrist or the psychologist?" said the doctor.

"She's the psychologist", said Ranger. "The psychiatrist does some therapy appointments, but he does a lot of consultations as well. The psychologist does solely therapy. She's a good person who is well familiar with the types of issues that vets face."

"Okay", said the doctor. He turned back to me. "Did you do the 24-hour urine test?"

"Yes and no", I said. "I did it from seven in the morning yesterday until eleven at night, but then I went out and while I was out I wet my pants in the freezer and went in the hospital since, so it wasn't a 24-hour test but instead was a 16-hour test, and the sample is still at home in the fridge."

"Okay. I want you to stay in the hospital for a couple of days, so that we can try to reduce your blood pressure as much as possible. I want to see what we can reduce it to without work knocking at your door, or without any of the family or other stresses in front of you. I would also like to monitor your concussion and to see you get sleep, to see you rest and relax as much as you can. While you are here, I'll have you do the 24-hour test. I would very much like to see whether there is protein in your urine."

"What does it mean if there is?" I said.

"If you have preeclampsia, you will have high blood pressure that appears after the twentieth week of pregnancy – which you have – protein in your urine, and swelling in your hands and face. There may be other problems as well, like headaches, vision problems, pain in your abdomen, and trouble breathing. It is a very serious condition. However, there are many women who have gestational hypertension and do not have preeclampsia. Sometimes it is just high blood pressure. What has me worried is that you don't have a history of high blood pressure before you were pregnant and, at no point in my treatment of you before, did you have high blood pressure then. Your blood pressure was great through being shot and the attempted kidnapping. It was great through your bodyguard getting shot and the various threats upon your life. I'm also worried because it is a blood pressure that it becoming more elevated as time goes on, and because your hands and face appear to be swelling. It is slight, but it is there."

"What is the treatment plan?" said Ranger.

"Diagnostically, I'm going to order another 24-hour urine test to test for protein in the urine, and I'll order full-spectrum blood tests to be done tomorrow morning before breakfast so that we have baseline results. Treatment-wise, I'm going to keep you in the hospital for a couple of days for observation. I want to have a couple of days of blood pressure readings so that I can see what the results are after being removed from anything that is stressful. If your blood pressure doesn't improve, I'll put you on medication to reduce it."

"Is it safe for the baby?"

"There are medications that are safe for the baby. Either way, I'll schedule more frequent appointments for the remainder of your pregnancy and we'll continue to monitor things. You'll have to go for regular blood tests and regular urine tests, and you'll have frequent ultrasounds done to judge the development of the baby. The last ultrasound that was done had the baby being on the small side of average but otherwise healthy. If things don't improve, we'll deliver the baby early."

"How soon would you deliver the baby?"

"I can't answer that. We'll want to keep the baby in there as long as possible, but at some point we may need to make the decision as to whether it would be safer for the baby to be outside the womb or within it. If the baby isn't getting enough oxygen or enough nutrients, that answer might be that it is better for the baby to be born."


	19. Chapter 19

I napped after the doctor had visited, and I woke slightly as I heard someone walk into the room. I heard Ranger walk out and shut the door after him, and I fell back to sleep. But seemingly seconds later, Ranger walked back in with Morelli and I opened my eyes. "Hey", I said as I smiled at him. "How are things going?"

"Good", said Joe.

"How's Simon?"

"He's good. He still has a headache, but he says that he is grateful to you and he wanted to pass his thanks on for clearing his name, and for coming to rescue him. As he said, if you hadn't followed, he likely would have died in that freezer."

"I feel bad for Simon. He's not equipped to handle that kind of problem."

"Is anyone?" said Morelli with a smile.

I smiled.

"How are you feeling?" he said.

"Okay. Bored."

"I'll bring a crossword puzzle book when I come tomorrow."

I made a face. "Crossword puzzles aren't my forte."

Morelli laughed. "I know. You'd be better with a coloring book and some pencil crayons."

I laughed. "At least it would be enjoyable."

"Tank is going into our apartment and bringing you some clothes to go home in, and picking up your tablet at the same time", said Ranger. "Then you'll be able to work on your room designs for when we have our new apartment."

"You're designing your apartment?" said Morelli.

"I'm looking at different room designs and have found a number of images of rooms that I like. When Ranger and I review them together and we pick the elements that we like, I've been going online and sourcing out the elements. I'm coming up with a spreadsheet of the items, where they are located, the sku number and how much they cost. While I started on the pictures some time ago, I have just started on the spreadsheet."

"That's a good idea", said Morelli.

"I thought it would keep her busy", said Ranger, "as well as give her something to do that will be very helpful to have done. It will make our lives incredibly easier after the apartment is built."

"Do you think you'll be on sick leave until the baby is born?" said Morelli.

"I hope not", I said at the same time as Ranger said, "yes." I made a face.

"If we can keep Steph's blood pressure down as much as possible using less medication by having her leave work, then it will be important for her to not work", said Ranger. "She has a good staff in place now, so going on sick leave is something that is doable. It is much more doable than it would have been a month ago."

"But I really hope that I'll be able to go back to work", I said. "It's boring staying at home. This is why I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mother to start off with."

"Ranger said that the hospital has been tracking your blood pressure, and it tends to increase when you have to interact with your family?"

"Yes. You know my family. I'm sure you understand."

Morelli laughed. "I do, actually. My blood pressure increases when I have to interact with mine as well. I understand completely."

My blood pressure cuff inflated with air and, as it let the air out again, Ranger read the output. "Steph's blood pressure may have become elevated when dealing with her family", he said to Morelli, "but it isn't elevated when interacting with you."

Morelli smiled with relief. "Thank God, because I would find it very hard to stay away. If I had to for your health, I would. But I would personally find that difficult."

"I love you too", I said.

Morelli smiled.

"So how's it going on the case?"

Morelli made a face. "You heard what the doctor said. No shop talk."

"Are you any closer to making an arrest?"

Morelli looked at Ranger, and Ranger sighed and nodded. "We know the company that is responsible for selling the body parts, and we have charged the company with selling human remains that had been dug up from the cemeteries. By facial recognition on all the heads found in the freezer, we have been able to identify thirty-three bodies that weren't donated. We have worked with Simon and Amelia, and they had identified the men who attacked you last night, and they have been charged with attempted murder. The case is a slam-dunk."

"Have you been able to arrest the men?"

"Yes. Apparently they had thought that you had been killed last night in the freezer and hadn't realized that you were still alive. They said some choice things that showed their surprise at being arrested. They knew we'd found the freezer of bodies, but they thought the bodies would all be assumed to be those donated to the company."

"How did you catch them?"

"Their names were part of public record and their social security numbers showed who was working there. We simply went to their homes and arrested them."

"When do they get out on bail?"

"That will probably be happening either this evening or tomorrow. I'm sure they won't do any more body snatching now that they know that we are on to them."

"They'll have to find another source of bodies for them to sell. I can't believe that it's okay to sell body parts like that."

"If the bodies are willingly donated, the companies taking the donated bodies can do whatever they like with those bodies."

"They aren't respecting the dead though."

"That's one of the problems with the practice. Ethically, it seems wrong to allow people to profit off of dead people's body parts. If a body is donated, it should stay donated and people shouldn't be making money off the body. It's a business that doesn't have a lot of regulation, and there's a wide range of service providers. In some cases, the service provider is professional and respectful of the dead. Yes, they are carving up the bodies but they are doing it in a respectful way and are doing it in the name of science. Other people, like the company that you ran into, aren't as respectful about the job. They throw the bodies in a heap on the floor of the freezer. They carve up the bodies with chainsaws and crude instruments. There needs to be more regulation on the industry sector, and that regulation needs to be standardized across the country. There shouldn't be laws that state something in New Jersey and another thing in New Hampshire. It's a problem."

"I'm glad that you caught the guys. Simon must be relieved that he is no longer a suspect."

"Tank took him home this morning when he took Amelia home. I went and picked up Simon later and brought him back to the station so that he could identify the men, and on the way back to his house I took him to the grocery store to buy a couple of bags of food. I told him it was in thanks for his participation in arresting the person responsible and I was doing it in recognition of the fact that he hadn't been able to earn money on the days that he'd been helping us. Simon seemed happy for the food, and said that he would help us any time we needed someone. I thanked him for his help in front of his family, and he looked so proud of himself."

"I don't think Simon is recognized very often for doing something good. He is in and out of jail so often that they know him by name. He doesn't have a great self-esteem."

"I can see why you like him."

"He's a nice person, when you catch him. He's a little wily and slippery to catch. But at least he isn't vindictive or aggressive. That is better than many people that I have to pick up." I sighed in sadness. I missed doing skip tracing. As much as I liked doing research and I was enjoying being the research director, I did miss being out and about all the time, and I missed having the job flexibility associated with being a bounty hunter.

"What's wrong, babe?" said Ranger.

"I was just thinking about how much I miss skip tracing."

"You aren't doing skip tracing again", said Morelli.

I turned my squinty eye on him. "Of course I am", I said. "I like skip tracing, and I'm good at it."

Morelli snorted.

"I am, Joe. I might not get them all the first time around, but I almost always get my man. I have a high capture rate and capture about ninety percent of all my skips."

"How many are Rangeman capturing with your capture plans?"

I looked down at the blankets. "Ninety-eight percent."

"It makes sense, cupcake, for you to continue to do capture plans and have Rangeman pick up the skips then, doesn't it? I mean, if you are capturing them faster and more fully with Rangeman doing the captures, doesn't it make sense having them do the work?"

My lip went out in a pout. "I don't want to give up capturing people."

"No one says you have to", said Ranger. He looked sharply at Morelli, and Joe looked abashed. I guessed that Ranger was telling him not to get me upset, and I thought that I might be able to milk this need to keep calm. There had to be something good in it. "If you want to let Rangeman pick up the skips and just do the capture plans, then our patrol staff will kiss the ground you walk on. However, if you want to do the regulars and the easy ones after the baby is born, then you can do that as well. Your time will be limited with only doing captures one day a week, so if you actually want to capture anyone rather than just do surveillance, you'll have to leave the more complex captures to the Rangeman staff and only take the easy ones."

Morelli breathed a sigh of relief as I nodded. I could live with that compromise.


	20. Chapter 20

Tank and Amelia came after dinner for a visit. I was relieved to see Amelia. I had been worried about her, and seeing that she had recovered as well as she had was reassuring to me. "What happened to you?" I said.

Amelia smiled. "I have a concussion as well, but mine isn't as severe as yours and I can be prescribed the good drugs", she said.

I pretended to pout. "Lucky!"

She laughed. "Seriously, I wasn't as cold as you since I was wearing a jacket. It didn't take me as long to warm up. Tank stayed with me the whole time I was thawing out, and then he took me back to his place to help me when I had nightmares last night." She blushed, and I looked at Tank. He looked mightily pleased with himself.

"Amelia did have some nightmares last night", said Tank, "so she has agreed to stay at my place with me for the next week or so until she feels a little more settled. In the meantime, she has a few extra sessions with Gabriel booked to help her through things."

"That's good", said Ranger. "Gabriel will help you process everything. He's a good resource and a great person to talk to. I personally have sessions with Gabriel but have signed Steph on to some sessions with Livy. Livy is supposed to be excellent too and, like you, I think Steph can use some personal support."

"When do you get to go home?" said Tank.

"Tomorrow they are doing tests", I said, "and I will likely get to go home the next day. The doctor just wants to have two days of blood pressure readings to review, and he wants me removed from the stresses of work completely. Depending upon what the tests say will determine whether I will have to go on medication to reduce my blood pressure."

"Do you think you'll have to?" said Tank. He looked concerned. Of course, so did Amelia.

"Just judging by the readings I have had today, even though most of the time I haven't been in a stressful situation, my blood pressure has remained high. Ranger and I suspect that I'll have to go on medication."

"What will that do to the baby?" said Amelia.

"There are medications that Steph can take that are safe for the baby", said Ranger. "What we do know is that, if this isn't controlled, the risks for Steph and the baby are great. We have to get control of this while we can."

"What are the risks to the baby?" said Amelia.

"The baby could be starved of food and oxygen", said Ranger, "and the baby could be born early or even be a stillborn. The baby will likely be small at birth, and we are already seeing that the baby is small for where she should be. It is hard to say, however, if she is abnormally small or whether she is just naturally small. My immediate family is all small. I am the giant in the family, and my parents often said that they didn't know where my size came from."

Tank laughed. "You should see me standing next to Mateo and Lucia." Mateo and Lucia were Ranger's parents. "They are about half my height."

I smiled as I remembered out wedding. At 6'6", Tank had towered over everyone at the restaurant. But then I remembered my sister and her spiteful comments at the wedding, and my smile faded.

Ranger looked at me in concern. He had always been a master at reading my emotions, and knowing instinctively what to say to make me feel better. I could tell that he knew that I was thinking about Val. He reached out and squeezed my hand in support, then turned to Amelia. "My mother is only 5'1", and my father is 5'7". My sisters are about the same height as my mother, and brother is the next tallest in the family after me. He's 5'9"."

"How tall is your daughter?" asked Amelia.

"Julie is little for her age as well. She is still growing, but at this point she is just under five feet. The doctor predicts that she'll be about 5'3" when she is finished growing."

"Steph said that she's quite active?"

"She is. She's a swimmer who enjoys running and martial arts. She's always been interested in sports, but I requested her to do martial arts when she was quite young. I stay out of most of the parenting decisions that my ex makes. Rachel is doing a good job and doesn't need me sticking my nose into things. However, I did ask for her to be put into martial arts. I think it's important for all people to know self-defense. Since I don't ask for much, generally what I do ask for Rachel does without a complaint, and this was no exception. I think she thought it was silly at first, but she is now glad that Julie has that training. She said that now that Julie is starting to date she's especially glad that Julie knows how to protect herself. Mixed with the fact that Julie is very mature for her age, the chances of her getting into trouble are lessened."

"Not eliminated", I said, "as we discovered a couple of weeks ago when we found out that Julie was being stalked, but they are at least lessened as she has a better chance of protecting herself in the event that someone is physically bothering her."

Amelia smiled. "I look forward to meeting her."

"You'll like her, Mellie", said Ranger. "She's a great kid. She's brilliant and has a wicked sense of humor. She's directed and determined, and you just know that she's going somewhere in her life."

"What does she want to be when she is older?" said Amelia.

"That varies depending upon when you ask her", said Ranger. "When she was younger, she wanted to be an Olympic swimmer and a hairdresser. Then she wanted to become a cop. Then she wanted to join the military. I don't know what she wants to do now."

"It's funny you should say that", I said. "I was emailing with her yesterday and she told me that the work that she is doing with the police has focused her goals. After seeing what the different players did, she thinks that she'd like to work for the FBI in an investigative role. She was talking with her guidance counselor about it, and together they have decided that the best way to get there would be a degree in criminology, followed by a law degree, and then she'd apply at the FBI. She said that she'd like to work in the policing world, but that she'd like to work on a national stage rather than a local stage." I turned to Ranger. "She wondered if you would teach her how to shoot a gun when she comes for the summer."

"Oh boy", said Tank.

Ranger laughed. "That's my girl", he said. "Learning how to shoot isn't such a bad idea."

"That's true", I said. "She seems pretty definite on this as her future career goal."

Ranger smiled. "God, I'm proud of her."

I smiled as well. "So am I."

I yawned, and Amelia put her hand on Tank's arm. "Steph is tired, and you promised to take me out for dinner."

"I'm sorry", I said. "I don't know why I'm tired. I slept all day."

"Yes, but you didn't sleep last night", said Ranger. "It's okay to be tired."

Tank handed over a bag. "I brought your tablet and a 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' book that I found lying around. I also brought you some clothes to wear home from the hospital and Amelia gathered some toiletries. If there is anything else that I can get the two of you, just let me know."

"Thanks, Tank."

He bent over and gave me a hug and kissed me on my cheek. "Take care of yourself, and take care of baby Tia. You are both very important to me."

Amelia gave me a hug. "I look forward to you coming home. I'll come and have tea with you."

I smiled as tears came to my eyes. "Sounds good", I said. "I hope to be home soon."

"If you aren't", said Amelia, "I'll just have to come and bother you here at the hospital. I can bring the tea to you."

"Thanks, Mellie."

They left shortly afterwards, and I turned to Ranger. "I think Mellie has developed a crush on Tank."

"Do you think so?" he said. "I think Tank likes her as well, but I think he's hesitant about asking her out."

"Why's that?"

"Tank is a confident man – except when you are talking about the ladies. I think that he is worried about being too big for women, and as graceful a man as he is, he feels like he is too clunky and awkward to be around most women. As he has said to me before, women are delicate and fragile, and he is always afraid of breaking them with his size."

"Are we talking about height, or are we talking about 'size' size?" I said as I waved my hands around my groin.

"I think both. I know that Tank has trouble finding a jock that fits him, so I suspect it is penis size as well."

"Don't you know? I mean, haven't you shared a change room before?"

Ranger laughed. "Yes, but it's not something I notice. It's not like I stare at another guy's dick. That would be grounds for getting punched." He looked intrigued. "Why? Do women stare at other women's breasts and compare notes?"

"No, but you tend to notice. Most women turn around in a change room so that you can't see the groin area, but they are freer when it comes to being topless. You still don't stare, but you have a general sense as to whether you are larger or smaller than the other women. Of course, you get a feel for that just by looking at other women when they are dressed as well."

"What do you mean?"

"It's pretty obvious that women are a certain size or not, just based on how they look. Men can hide how big they are, but women can't. It's apparent, no matter what they do. I mean, unless you pad your bra, your size is front and center and everyone can see what size you are. Even when I was at the bonds office in the middle of January, when Zach was shot, everyone there noticed and commented on my increased size. It's hard to miss."

"Even Vinnie?" Ranger did not look pleased.

I laughed. "Maybe especially Vinnie", I said. "You know how sexually oriented he is. He's going to notice. He won't act on it. He is my cousin, after all. But he will notice. I would argue, however, that most people – male and female – would notice. It is something you use to describe a person, just as much as color of hair or color of eyes."

"I guess so. It seems sort of tawdry though."

"It doesn't have to be. There are many places in this world where topless beaches are the norm, and being topless has no more of a connotation to it for women than it does for men. I think that is a healthier way to live."

"So you could perhaps walk around the apartment topless?"

"I grew up in a society where women cover up. Just because I think it is healthy for a woman's breasts to be accepted rather than viewed as a sex symbol doesn't mean that I feel comfortable exposing myself."

"Thank God", said Ranger.

I laughed. "Why?"

"Those breasts are mine – although I am willing to let Tia rent them for a while. I don't particularly want anyone else seeing them."

"So what about breastfeeding?"

"I agree with it. You know that, babe. That's why we're planning on having you work from home for the first year, just so that you can breastfeed Tia."

"I wasn't specific enough. What about breastfeeding in public?"

"I don't have a problem with that. Breastfeeding is a natural function. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to strip off your top and wave your breasts around as you feed the baby. But I also wouldn't expect you to go into another room."

"What about when other people feed their babies?"

"It doesn't bother me, but I'm not too sure of the protocol surrounding breastfeeding. Generally, I just wouldn't look at the person. However, if I knew the person I would just look at their eyes and try not to notice the bare breast. Personally, if we are in a mixed group then I feel the most comfortable with the person covering up to a certain degree. By that I mean the breast that isn't in use is covered. When my sisters had their kids they just lifted their top on the side that was in use and, by doing that, they were covered either by their bunched up top or the baby itself."

I thought about that for a moment. "That's what Val does as well, and I think I would be comfortable with that. At first, though, I might want to go into another room. At least until I get used to feeding the baby. At first, I suspect that I will need to take my top off completely so that I can see better to try to help the baby learn how to feed properly. However, once the baby learns and can latch on with ease, I will feel more comfortable leaving my top on and breastfeeding in front of people."

"When you are first learning, do you mind if I am in the room?"

I smiled. "Not at all. As you said, they are yours. I don't feel weird when you look at me without a shirt on. I would if someone else did though."

"I can live with that."

"To be honest, the idea of breastfeeding seems a little odd to me. But then, so does the idea of being pregnant."

"What do you mean?"

"There is a living thing inside of me, one that I can feel move around. It just seems odd. I mean, if it was a tapeworm I'd have it surgically removed."

Ranger laughed.

"Then there's the whole idea of breastfeeding. It makes me feel like a cow, but I've heard that it is one of the best feelings in the world. I've heard that it's much more satisfying than bottle feeding your baby."

"I look forward to seeing our baby's head at your breast, to hearing her sounds of enjoyment much like my sounds of enjoyment. I look forward to tasting your milk."

"Euww – that's gross!"

"Why? It's perfectly natural, and I've always wondered what breast milk tastes like. Babies certainly seem to like it."

"I guess." I smiled. "I don't think you'll like it much. It's supposed to be sweet."

"So are you, and I like you very much."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything at all.


	21. Chapter 21

I did the 24-hour pee test and the blood tests, and besides the time that those tests were occurring, I was hooked up to the blood pressure monitor. By the time I was ready to leave the hospital, the doctor had almost two days of readings that were taken every ten minutes. The day that we were supposed to leave, I was unhooked from the monitor long enough to have a shower, and I dressed in the clean clothes that Tank and Amelia had brought for me. By the time the doctor showed up to review the results, I was more than ready to leave.

I was sitting on the bed eating a breakfast that Ranger had bought in the cafeteria for me. Apparently they had raisin scones in the cafeteria, and I absolutely loved raisin scones. I had always liked them before being pregnant, but I hadn't thought of them as anything special. However, since getting pregnant I had developed a fondness for them that I couldn't describe. Ella, our housekeeper who made us dinner each day, frequently made a batch and put them in our freezer to be taken out for snacks. Ranger had made me some in the past as well. When he saw one in the cafeteria, he bought it for me even though he knew that I had already eaten. And I was craving them enough that it didn't matter that I wasn't hungry. I still ate it anyway.

I popped in the last mouthful of scone and took a sip of my tea. "How are you?" I said.

"I'm well, thank you. How are you feeling?" said Dr. Wilson.

"Okay. I just wish I could get the good drugs."

"What do you mean?"

"My head is splitting and has been since I was hit the other night."

"The swelling in your brain has gone down quite a bit", said the doctor. "The headache should recede as long as it is caused by the concussion."

"What else could it be caused by?" said Ranger.

"We checked for protein in your urine", said the doctor, "and there were traces of it present. Mixed with your high blood pressure and the slight swelling in your hands and feet, we know that you have early-onset preeclampsia. This is something that is very serious and we need to monitor closely."

"This could cause a headache?" said Ranger.

"It could cause all sorts of problems and yes, a headache is one of them. Now, preeclampsia is serious but is quite common. It affects approximately five to eight percent of pregnancies, and often women have healthy babies. If you were farther along in your pregnancy I would just deliver the baby. However, you aren't and it would not be safe for the baby to be delivered now."

I looked at him, stunned. I felt like such a failure of a mother that I was unable to carry a baby to term successfully.

"What causes preeclampsia?" asked Ranger.

"Nobody knows."

"Will Steph get to go home?" said Ranger.

I stared at him in shock. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't get to go home. Tears spilled out of my eyes as I considered having to stay in the hospital. I mean, I didn't have anything against hospitals, but unless I was dying I didn't want to be there. They served green jello in hospitals, and I personally thought that you'd have to be sick to eat green jello. Everybody knew that red was the only good kind, although orange would do in a pinch. Green was the color of snot when you had a sinus infection. Who would willingly eat something the color of infectious snot? And don't even start me on yellow jello and what it looked like.

"Yes, or at least, she will right now. I will want Stephanie to come in to my office for a check every second day, so every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will send her for regular blood work to judge whether there her organs are becoming damaged from the condition. At this point they are fine, but that is something we have to monitor. I will send her for regular urine tests to judge whether there is an increasing level of protein present. Right now, there is just a small concentration of protein in the urine. That's good, because it means that the preeclampsia is just starting and is mild. As I said, it is early onset, and it is just slightly there. However, what I suspect that it means is that we just caught it earlier than most cases. With seeing you so frequently with your various calamities, I've kept a closer eye on you than I do on most patients. I suspect that the protein concentration will increase over time.

"There are things that we can do though. I'm prescribing a medication to lower your blood pressure. I will take your blood pressure every second day, and we'll keep on top of things that way. We will listen to your baby's heartbeat every second day to ensure the baby is not in distress. We'll do ultrasounds weekly. If we need to, we'll admit you to the hospital. The baby will likely be born early, although we will try to keep her in there as long as possible. On your end, I want you to drink at least eight glasses of water a day, in addition to the milk and juice and tea and whatever you drink. I want you to increase your protein consumption. I want you to rest, lying down with your feet up, on your left side, as much as you can. I want you to do a half hour of yoga and gentle stretches each day. And I want, more than anything else, for you to divorce yourself from work. You need this and your baby needs this. I'm serious, Stephanie."

"I tried to divorce myself from work."

"Babe", said Ranger, "nobody is blaming you. I know that you are doing whatever possible to look after yourself and our baby. You'll be a great mother, and you are already looking after our baby the best that you can."

"I'm just not looking after our baby well enough. I'm a failure as a mother."

"Babe, you'll be a great mother. You have more love in you than anyone else that I have ever met. Tia will be lucky to have you for a mother."

I sniffled. "Maybe my sister is right and I am an unnatural mother." I swiped the tears from my face.

"Stephanie", said the doctor, "having preeclampsia has nothing to do about your ability to be a mother. We don't know why some women develop preeclampsia. It is more common in first-time mothers. We know that. But we don't know why some women contract it. As I said, it is quite common."

"My sister has had five pregnancies and has never had a problem."

"That doesn't mean that she is a better mother than you", said the doctor. "That just means that her pregnancies were easier."

"You'll be a better mother than her", said Ranger. He looked at the doctor. "Val is a good person who loves her kids dearly, but she has five kids who are all vying for her attention, and there isn't enough of her to go around. She is jealous of Stephanie and has said several hurtful things to her that are designed to make her feel bad about herself as a person and to question her ability to parent."

"She's called me unnatural and says that I'll be a terrible parent because I want to work after the baby is born." I shuddered in a sob. "Maybe she's right."

"Stephanie", said Dr. Wilson, "I have two kids and I love my kids immensely. I wouldn't do anything to hurt my kids, and neither would my wife. She lives for her kids. She also has elected to work full-time. What I find is that when either my wife or I am home, we are _at_ _home_ for those kids. We are happy and that happiness spreads to our children. The key is getting a loving caregiver to take your place while you're at work, and from what you've said you have already selected a caregiver. Is that still right?"

"Yes." I caught my breath. "Mellie is doing her early childhood education certificate in preparation for the role, and she has just finished doing a first aid course for infants and children. She adores kids, and when I took her to my parents' for dinner on the weekend I found she had a way with my nieces and nephew. We walked in and they were all crying and my sister was yelling at them, and Mellie stopped two kids from crying and I stopped another, which meant that the two older kids weren't irritated any longer, and it allowed my sister to make pot shots without needing to yell over the crying."

"So you have picked someone who is loving and works well with children, someone who cares so much about doing a good job that she is willing to take courses to prepare herself for the role."

"Yes."

"And I know that you'll be a good mother. It's okay to want a life of your own as well as a life with your kids. I know from experience that, if my wife was home full-time with the kids, they would drive her nuts and she wouldn't be a good mother to them. She'd be too unhappy to be a good mother. However, she has her career and, when she comes home from work, she wants to be with our kids. She adores them and it comes out, and our kids know that they are adored and loved for who they are. There is nothing wrong with wanting a career and wanting children. They do not have to be mutually exclusive."

"I grew up in the Burg. You either stayed home with your kids or you wished you were staying home with your kids."

"That's a very old-fashioned way of thinking. Honestly, I think there were a lot of unhappy mothers in the previous generations. I know I would be unhappy staying at home full-time with my kids, and just because I am a man doesn't make me any different than a woman. There is no reason that a woman has to stay at home."

"My sister says that I'm unnatural because I have the option to stay at home without it impacting our bottom line yet I want to go out to work."

"So does my wife. She's happier going out to work though."

"It will actually cost us more to hire Mellie to look after our baby than I earn."

"Then you are in a very lucky spot to be able to hire someone who is so ideally suited to your family needs, no matter how much she costs." He paused and looked at me snuffling and sniffling. Ranger put his arm around me and pulled me into his body, smoothed my hair back from my face and let me cry. When the storm passed, the doctor said, "it's a little hard to tease out the symptoms and the causes. You have a headache. That could be because of the preeclampsia, or it could be because you have a concussion. You are emotional. That could be because of the concussion or it could be because you are pregnant. Are you having trouble with your vision?"

I sniffled. "Not any more. I did when I was first admitted to the hospital."

"Are you experiencing any pain?"

"Not including my headache, no."

"Are you experiencing shortness of breath?"

"No."

"That's all good." He took a prescription pad out of his lab coat and wrote out a prescription. He handed the paper to Ranger. "Here is a prescription for blood pressure medication. We'll give this a try to reduce your blood pressure. Call my office today and set up appointments for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next fifteen weeks. Avoid your family and reduce your stress. Whatever you do, do not spend time with your sister. Add some gentle stretches into your day every day. See a therapist and learn how to meditate effectively. Drink lots of water and eat more protein. Spend a significant portion of your day lying down on your left side. And most of all, don't worry. We have caught this at the very beginning stages and we are taking the steps to treat it. This is not a reflection of your ability to parent and it's not punishment for being a bad person. It is just a reflection of the fact that, for some reason, you have developed preeclampsia. We don't know why it has happened. We just know it has and that we have to take steps to manage it."

"Okay", I said. I hoped that Ranger was listening because I was too upset to remember much of what the doctor had said.

"I'll discharge you now", said the doctor, "and I'll see you tomorrow." He got up and patted my shoulder, and turned to walk out of the room.


	22. Chapter 22

Ranger had arranged with Morelli to pick us up at the hospital and drive us back to Rangeman. As Morelli came into the hospital room, he looked at me and my tear-stained face. "You okay, cupcake?"

I sniffled. Joe had seen me cry so many times that it was impossible for me to lie and blame my wet eyes on an eyelash in my eye. "Not really", I said.

Morelli paled. "What's wrong?"

Tears flowed down my face again, and I turned to Ranger and hid my head in his side.

"It has been confirmed that Steph has early-onset preeclampsia, which is characterized by high blood pressure, protein in the urine, swelling in her face and hands and so on. She is going to be monitored quite closely as her pregnancy continues to ensure that there aren't any lasting ramifications. Add in that she still has a headache from her concussion and she has to adapt her lifestyle, and she's a very unhappy person right now."

"What could happen if she doesn't treat it?"

"The baby or Steph could die", said Ranger.

Morelli paled some more. "What can I do to help?"

"Just be there for her. The baby will be most likely induced early, but it will be a very rocky period over the next four months. We are keeping Steph out of the hospital right now, but there may come a time when she has to be hospitalized. We are very much playing it by ear, and we aren't sure what will happen in the future other than that the baby will be induced early."

"What have you told Steph's family?"

"We talked to Helen on Tuesday, and told her that Steph had high blood pressure and the doctor was concerned about it. When we told Helen about it, we asked her not to tell anyone other than Frank. Steph and I felt that her grandmother knowing would be bad and would cause more stress than anything else. Her grandmother's propensity to fabricate stories is astounding, and Steph didn't want any stories about her high blood pressure spread around. She thought her grandmother would tell everyone that she'd had a heart attack or a stroke, and she didn't want to have to answer questions about it."

"Now that you have confirmed that you have preeclampsia, are you planning on telling them?"

"I don't know", I said. "While I think they deserve to know, I don't want to deal with the dramatics."

"Can you tell Helen and get her to tell the rest of the family? I have found that Helen can be a bit dramatic, but when something goes seriously wrong, she's solid and you can count on her to support you. Grandma Mazur is a bit flighty and you never know which way the wind will blow with her. Frank is entirely solid and dependable. And Val is competitive. She always has been. But instead of competing for the title of Captain of the cheerleading squad or top mark in school, she is competing for the title of Best Mother and Favorite Daughter, and she will do anything to achieve those titles. She feels threatened by Steph. That isn't Steph's fault. It's not a reflection on Steph but is rather a reflection on Val. I suspect, though, that Val will step up and be a good sister if you give her a chance."

"I don't want Val to know."

"That's your decision to make", said Morelli, "but I think that you are selling Val short. I think, if you tell her, that she will be more willing to help you than you might suspect."

"Only because she will see it as proof that she is superior." Although I had told him about Val making pot shots, I hadn't told him about what Val had said at the wedding in her drunken venom – and I wasn't going to.

Morelli sighed. "I see your point."

"She will make all sorts of comments on how she carried five babies to term without any problems, and she is just a better mother than I am. She may even call me unnatural again."

"How would you like to handle it?" said Morelli.

"I don't know", I said sadly. "I just know that I don't want to hurt anymore."

Ranger kissed me on the top of my head. "I'll get a wheelchair, and we'll ride out of this place in style."

He left the room and I turned to Morelli. "Aren't you glad you didn't marry me now?"

Morelli looked at me. "Yes, but not for the reason that you are thinking. I'm happy I didn't marry you because I could never have made you as happy as Ranger makes you. I'm happy because, although I love you with everything I have, it is nothing compared to the love that Ranger has for you. When you were gone on Monday night and we couldn't find you, Ranger was almost out of his mind in fear. I have never seen him like that. I have never seen anyone like that. He's always Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected, but it was like he entered another state on Monday and became scarily focused on the mission. He pushed everything out of his mind except his need to find you. When he arrived at AnatSci, the men were searching the industrial unit for you. They came back to him and told him that they couldn't find you and that you weren't there. He grew intense and focused, and he told them to look again. When they all scattered to do another search, he just breathed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, and I could see him pull in his anxiety so that he could climb on top of it and complete the mission. When the men came back fifteen minutes later and said that you weren't there, he told them to search every single little cupboard to see if they could find proof that you had been there or, even better, some proof telling us where you had gone. Ranger and I then searched the building ourselves. We entered the dissection room at the same time as Hal found your purse, and Ranger zeroed in on the freezer. It was like he had some mental link to you, some preternatural sense that you were in there, and that you were in trouble. He got Hal and they blasted their way through the door, and then we saw you. You were collapsed in Amelia's and Simon's arms, and Ranger thought that you were dead. He gave this anguished yell, and it sounded like his heart was breaking. I had never heard such pain before. He jumped over the rubble and picked you up to carry you out of the freezer. He put you on one of the metal tables and wrapped you in his coat, and he monitored your pulse. And he cried, cupcake. He didn't think that you were going to make it…That's the kind of love he has for you, and as much as I love you, as much as you are my best friend, I don't have that bone-deep, can't-live-without-you kind of love for you. You deserve that, cupcake. Because from what I've seen? You have the same kind of love for him."

Ranger came into the room with a wheelchair. "Are you ready to blow this popsicle stand?" he said.

"Yeah", I said. I turned to Morelli. "You deserve that as well, Joe."

Morelli smiled. "Someday", he said.

I turned to Ranger. "Do you have everything? Your computer? My tablet? My clothes that desperately need washing because they have dead people cooties on them?"

Ranger smiled. "We have everything."

"I'm glad the police found my coat", I said. "I don't particularly want to buy another winter coat for only a few more weeks of cold, but I am greatly appreciative of warmth lately and don't particularly want to go out in the cold without my coat on."

"Luckily, when you get back to Rangeman, you will only have to leave the building to go to doctor's appointments", said Ranger. "We are pretty well self-sufficient there."

Ranger wheeled me down to the main entrance, and Joe took the bags and said, "I'll bring the car up. Give me five minutes, and I'll be back." He hurried out the door.

"You okay?" said Ranger softly.

"Yeah. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of feeling like a failure and tired of trying to deal with my crazy family. I'm tired of being in pain and I'm tired of blaming myself for everything that has happened."

"But you heard the doctor. They have identified no known reason for preeclampsia to occur. This isn't a result of anything you did or didn't do. This just happened."

"Why did it have to happen to me?"

"Why not you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Preeclampsia seems to be something that just happens. They don't know why but it seems to be a pretty random thing. It isn't a punishment for anything and it isn't because you have done something wrong. It isn't a failure on your part or a personality defect or a weird biological deficiency. It is totally random. So why shouldn't it happen to you? What makes you so special that it wouldn't happen to you?"

I looked at him in amazement. "You aren't mad? I thought you'd be wishing that you hadn't married me."

He brought my hand to his mouth, turned it over and kissed my palm. "That is so far away from how I feel that it isn't even in the same universe. I am not mad. I'm worried, but I'm not mad. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you. I don't think I could cope. I have never been as close to going out of my mind as I was when I thought that you had died on Monday night. I felt like something broke in me, and only feeling your pulse again put me back together. I will always be grateful that you married me, and I will do anything in my power to make sure you are safe and happy." He looked at me, and his eyes welled with tears. "I love you, okay? I love you more than life itself. You are my everything."


	23. Chapter 23

"You never said", I said after Joe left. He had stayed for lunch, but had left a few minutes before. "How did it go in Little Rock?"

Ranger smiled. "Good", he said. "I met with Bill, and we enjoyed spending time together again. We had worked a lot together in the past, and it was nice to reconnect with him. He heard all about you and I heard about his wife and his two kids. He is greatly looking forward to taking over the reins in Little Rock. So I met him on Sunday night for dinner, and then on Monday morning I fired Randy and officially hired Bill. I then held a meeting for all senior staff to introduce both Bill and Rangeman, and to talk to the staff about how we could help their staff and some of the changes that were coming down the pipe. But I started getting antsy about being away, and Bill noticed. He told me that he had everything under control and that I should get home. I told him that I was leaving a lot of initiation work to him to do, and he told me that the reason I had hired him in particular was so that he could run the branch – and that the initiation work was part of running the branch. He told me that I should come home. By that time, I was beyond worried. So I rebooked my flight and left that afternoon and was home by midnight. That's when I found that you weren't there, and that's when I initiated a search for your tracker and discovered that you were at the industrial park – and I decided that it was a good idea to go down to the control room to see what they said about you being where you were."

"I'm glad you were there."

"I think I will have nightmares about you being killed for a long time, babe", he said softly. "Please be patient with me. I feel like I am always saying that, but please be patient with me as I work out my terror." He pulled me up to my feet, and tugged me into the bedroom. "I need a shower", he said, "and I need to feel your skin, to know that you're alright. And then I need a nap. I don't think that I've slept more than an hour each night since I left you. I'm a little punch drunk with fatigue."

"You should have left me in the hospital so that you could come home and get some sleep."

"I needed to be with you, babe. I needed to be able to see you and touch you whenever I wanted. I wouldn't be able to do that if I'd come home."

We got to the bathroom and Ranger stripped the sweater off my body. He pulled my pants off and, as he crouched down to pull my panties off, he kissed the swell of my tummy. He rested his forehead against me, and tears came to his eyes. "I love you so damn much", he said. "And I am so damn grateful that you are okay."

I pulled him to his feet and stripped his top off him. I sniffled as I looked at him. "Take me to the shower, soldier boy", I said.

"Soldier boy?" said Ranger. He laughed, and I was glad that I could wipe the tears from his eyes. "I'll have you know that I'm a college graduate. That means that I'm a frat boy, not a soldier boy."

I laughed. "Really? I know what frat boys were like when I went to school. They had a reputation for lots of beer and lots of sex, and I figure that with all that sex frat boys should be pretty good at it."

"I don't know. Lots of beer and lots of sex isn't usually a good mix, and if you need to have one to have the other I could almost guarantee that the participants wouldn't be having a good time. Did you ever go out with a frat boy?"

"Dickie was one. I thought he was so cool for being in a frat. He wanted me to join a sorority."

"You didn't? Why not?"

"I contributed to my college fund and worked my way through college at the Tasty Pastry. It was the way I apologized to my parents for not having won a scholarship. I didn't have time for a sorority."

Ranger kicked off his pants and underwear and turned on the shower. He waited until the water had warmed up, then ushered me into the enclosure. "Was your sister's scholarship large?" he said.

I laughed. "Not really. I contributed much more to my college fund through my jobs than Val did through her scholarship. But while Val thought the world owed her a free ride, I felt that I should have to pay for my own way. And I guess that is one of the differences between the two of us."

"That's true. You are one of the hardest workers I have ever met", said Ranger. "I admire that about you."

"You do?"

"Yes. Do you know what else I admire about you?"

He poured a little shampoo into his hands and spread it through my hair. As he lathered it into a sudsy ball and rinsed it out, I said, "no. What?"

"I admire your perfect body." He kissed me on each breast. "It is so different than mine, and I admire the differences."

"I don't know. Your body is more perfect than mine. You are everything a man should be."

"That doesn't make sense. It's like pregnancy. You are either pregnant or you aren't. Similarly, you are either perfect or you aren't. There is no such thing as more than perfect."

"Then whoever said that had never met you."

Ranger laughed. He washed my body and then quickly washed his own. As he turned off the water, he said, "I had been intending to make love but – I can hardly believe that I am saying this – I'm too tired. The mind is willing but the body is not." He stepped out and gave me a towel, then quickly dried himself off. "Give me six hours to recover, and then we can spend some time together tonight."

I grinned. "I'm looking forward to it."

Ranger finished drying me off, looked at me and groaned. "Give me four hours and I'll be ready to go."

I smiled and hung my towel on the rack, turned to the vanity and took my comb out of my drawer. I combed out my hair and Ranger watched my breasts bobbing as I moved my arms. "Two hours", he said. "Two hours of sleep, and then I want to be in your perfect body."

I smiled and put my comb away. I walked out of the bathroom and lay down on the bed. As Ranger watched me, I trailed my hand from my groin to my breasts. Ranger watched me with an enormous tenting happening in his nether regions, and he swallowed hard. "Fuck waiting", he said. He followed me down to the mattress and molded my body with his hands. "That was the fastest two hours I have ever spent."

I laughed.


	24. Chapter 24

Ranger and I had a good sleep, and Ranger got up late for the day. He'd slept all the way to seven, which was still early in my books but, since Ranger normally got up between five and five-thirty, it was a huge sleep-in for him. Of course, he'd been up many hours during the night as we reaffirmed our love for each other. Ranger had done everything he had said that he would. He had made love to me right away, at two hours, at four hours and at six. I think he made love to me a couple of other times, but by the morning they were all blending in with each other and I wasn't really sure.

So Ranger got up at seven and went down to the gym to work out his tension and residual upset from thinking I was dead. He had a session booked with Gabriel for lunch, and I was glad that he was going. More than ever, I thought he could use the support.

While Ranger was up at seven and I knew that he had gotten up, I personally slept until eleven and woke up feeling much cheerier and more positive than I had since before Ranger had left for Little Rock. I felt like I had a bit of space from Val and her spiteful comments, some space from what had happened on Monday night, and my headache was receding a bit. It was still definitely there, but it wasn't excruciating like it had been the day before. I put the difference down to good sex and a great sleep. Like having a good cry and a great sleep did for me, I was bouncing back mentally. I thought, for the first time since I had been told to avoid work, that I might be able to bring this baby to term without blowing my brains out.

I decided that I would call my mother at lunch and ask my mother to call back when she had some time to herself without anyone around to listen. I could count on my mother to do so, and I could also count on my mother to not tell my grandmother or my sister. My mother was good at protecting secrets. This would be one heck of a secret to keep, but I thought that I could count on her. She had never failed me in the past before. Even when she didn't agree with it, she had never failed me in the past before.

I got out of bed and padded through to the office. Ranger was working on his computer and, when I walked in, he smiled and pushed himself back from the desk so that I could sit on his lap. "Good sleep?" he said.

I smiled. "Great sleep. How about you?"

"I had a great sleep as well", he said. "I have to go to visit Gabriel in about half an hour. I will bring back lunch but, in the meantime, I have taken out some cinnamon streusel loaf and have peeled some hard-boiled eggs for you to eat to put you on to lunch, and the coffee in the pot is decaf if you are interested."

I smiled. "You spoil me."

"You deserve it."

"I was thinking about my mother", I said. I explained to him what I had been intending to do. "I know that it isn't really fair to my mother, but I think it is more fair than not telling her at all. She's my mother and she deserves to know."

"I agree with that", said Ranger. "I was thinking that I'd also like to tell my family. They will be concerned but will not be over the top. I think the support will be good for us and, like with your mother, I think they have the right to know."

"I agree with that." I paused. "You don't think that I have to tell Val and my grandmother what is going on?"

"No, I don't. This is entirely your news to tell whomever you want. You can tell everybody or you can tell nobody. If you decide not to tell your grandmother or Val, they will be hurt. However, that hurt is directly related to what they have done in the past. It is as you told Chastity a few weeks ago." Chastity was someone I knew from high school. We had recently reconnected when she needed our help. After helping her, though, we had found out that she was part of an extortion ring and had been using us to help hide her criminal activities. "You told her that for every action there is a consequence, and although you can choose the actions you can't choose the consequences. The actions your grandmother has chosen are to fabricate and spread gossip. The consequence is that you aren't telling your grandmother details on your life. Similarly, your sister has been vile to you and is saying all sorts of terrible things. The consequence of that is that you are pulling away from her and not sharing with her your trials and tribulations. That is entirely your decision and, if you aren't comfortable with it as time goes on, you can always change your mind later."

I smiled and kissed him, and snuggled into his body. Ranger just held me, without saying anything, and I absorbed his peace. After a few minutes, Ranger said quietly, "I have arranged the appointments with the doctor for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at ten in the morning, except for today. Today our appointment is at two, as you know. I have also made appointments with Livy for you. You are seeing her every Tuesday and Thursday at lunch, except for this week. Today you are seeing her at five. She's working you in after hours today. I thought that you could also get Gabriel to check your blood pressure at your Tuesday and Thursday appointments. Since Gabriel works Saturdays as well, you'll be able to get Gabriel to check your blood pressure then too, which will mean that Sunday will be the only day that you aren't monitored."

"That would be good."

"I know that it would make me feel better to know that you are being so closely watched", said Ranger.

I kissed him on his cheek. "I know", I said. "I'm scared as well."

Ranger kissed me on my forehead. "Let's eat", he said. "My coffee needs to be refreshed, and I'm feeling a little peckish myself. I could use a snack to put me on until lunch."

I smiled and got to my feet, and I walked into the kitchen and took out a mug. The pot of coffee was almost filled, and I looked at Ranger in surprise. "I just made a new pot", he said. "I thought that you might be getting up soon."

I thanked him and refreshed his coffee as he put cream in my cup, and filled my cup with the brew. I sniffed it gratefully before taking my first initial sip and sighing. "There is nothing like the first cup of coffee in the morning", I said.

Ranger smiled and took a sip from his own mug, and he took the boiled eggs out of the refrigerator and put them on the breakfast bar. He added the cinnamon loaf and poured me a glass of orange juice. "I know that you have been craving cheese", he said, "but I thought that eggs would be a nice change for you."

"You know", I said, "it was the strangest thing. When you were gone, I thought that I would have a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I know that you don't like them, and I haven't had one in a long time."

"If you feel like one, you shouldn't avoid having them just because I don't like them."

"I know, but like I hated watching you eat raw oysters, I know you don't like watching me eat peanut butter and olive sandwiches. So anyway, I made one for myself and started to eat it, and immediately went and threw up the food. I know I love peanut butter and olive sandwiches, but apparently the baby does not. I guess she takes after you rather than me."

Ranger laughed. "Apparently she has good taste."

"Watch it, buddy", I said. "Don't go insulting my taste just because I appreciate a wider variety of foods than you."

Ranger laughed again.

"I just hope that our baby enjoys fruits and vegetables as much as you do, and doesn't like chocolate and junk food as much as me. Our baby will be very healthy if she eats the same sort of things as you."

Ranger smiled. "I think our baby definitely will enjoy fruits and vegetables as much as I do. I've noticed that, when you go back for seconds in food, you tend to go for the fruits and vegetables more than other food types since you've been pregnant."

"Part of that is because I am craving them and part of that is because I think that, if I am hungry, I am giving the baby more nutrients and less calories than I would be if I was eating more calorie-dense foods."

"That's true, but from this point on, when you are filling your tummy you should also eat more protein. Since you are losing some through your urine, you have to make sure the baby is getting enough."

"I weighed myself today. I like doing that before my appointment so that I am prepared if I have gone up in weight. I'm a little upset about it. I don't know how I did it, but I have gained three pounds in the last week."

Ranger looked concerned. "I was looking online, and that is a symptom of preeclampsia", he said. "Luckily, it isn't a true weight. It is rather a matter of water retention. There is nothing you can do about it, so I wouldn't pay attention to it. From this point on, I wouldn't worry about your weight. You aren't eating junk and you aren't eating abnormal amounts of food. If you gain excessive weight, it will be a result of the condition rather than anything else."

I looked down at the food and swallowed hard. "I don't want to gain excessive weight", I said. "Val got enormous with her pregnancies, and I don't think that human skin is supposed to stretch that much."

"I know, babe. But it is what it is and, if you do gain excessive weight, it won't be because you were drinking gravy at every meal. It will solely be from water retention, and there is little that you can do about that other than to keep drinking water and to keep your feet up and lie down for a significant portion of your day."

I blew out an unhappy breath. "I hate this."

"I'm not particularly fond of this either. However, it is what it is and we can't fight it. It won't change anything and will just make us upset. We have been given a certain situation that we now have to deal with, and we just have to deal with what is in front of us." He looked at me for a moment. "Don't get lost in the shoulds and shouldn'ts. It is neither productive nor helpful to try to assign blame. Just deal with what is in front of you at the time. You'll be okay."

"How can you know that?"

"I have faith."

I finished my meal in silence, and after I finished Ranger rubbed my arm in comfort. "I have to go for my appointment. Will you be okay?"

I nodded. "I'm going to have a long shower", I said, "and pamper myself for a bit. I am also going to call my mother and talk to her. I probably won't talk to her long, but I will want her to call me back and I want to tell her when we are in our appointment so as to warn her not to call then."

"Okay. Enjoy the pampering and I hope the call goes well with your mother."

"Thanks", I said.

Ranger got up and gave me a kiss, and left the apartment. I cleaned up my dishes from breakfast, picked up my coffee, and went into the bathroom to have a shower. By the time I had finished, I was feeling much more relaxed. I dried my hair and swiped on some mascara and tinted lip balm. Because I thought the day could use all the help it could get, I swiped on three coats of mascara.

I had a theory that the number of coats of mascara that you wore determined the way your day was going to go. One coat and your day would go down the toilet. Three coats and your day would go well. I figured the whole reason I had developed preeclampsia was because I hadn't been wearing any mascara at all when I had been admitted to the hospital.

So I put on three coats of mascara and dressed in a pair of thick black tights, a jean skirt, a black turtleneck and a black blazer. It looked cold out but, despite the weather, I wanted to dress in a manner that made me feel better about myself. Knowing that I looked pulled together went a long way to making me feel more in control.

When I was ready for the day, I poured myself a tall glass of ice water, added a slice of lemon, and carried the drink through to the living room. I sat down on the sofa, swung my legs up onto the couch and stretched out, took a sip of my water and picked up my phone and called my mother.

"Hi, Mom", I said. "Do not put me on speakerphone."

"Hey, Steph. What's up?"

"I wanted to talk to you when Grandma and Val weren't there. I don't want them to know what I have to say."

"Okay. Val got fired from her job and is home with the kids, and your grandmother decided to take advantage of the fact that we don't have the kids and is getting her hair done right now. I am totally alone."

"Val got fired from her job?"

"Yes. She took too many calls from Albert on the weekends when he was having trouble with the kids. She didn't mind getting fired. She said it was a bad job anyway and that she didn't want a job where she couldn't talk to her kids during the day."

"But most if not all jobs are like that."

"I may not have worked outside the house, but even I know that. Apparently he was calling three times an hour. Personally, I think what really cinched the firing was the fact that she was starting to call in 'sick' on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. She found that she liked having days off without the kids, and she would take days off while I had the kids to take care of herself."

"You can't do that!"

"I know. So I offered to take care of the kids one day a week while she was at home so that she could have some time to herself. I think she is really struggling."

"I can see that. I don't think that I could do five kids."

"You could, Steph. If you had to, you could do five kids just fine. You have lots of love in you."

I sniffled.

"What's going on?"

"I want to tell you something, but I want you to keep it a secret. Can you do that?"

"I promise. Can I tell your father? He's the only person I would have a problem keeping a secret from."

"I don't mind if you tell Dad. He's better at keeping a secret than anyone I have ever met."

My mother laughed. "That's true", she said. "What's going on?"

"Remember how Ranger told you that I have high blood pressure?"

"Yes."

"The doctor did some tests while I was in the hospital, and it appears that I have the beginning stages of early-onset preeclampsia."

"What's that, Steph?" I could hear the dread in my mother's voice.

"It's a condition that means that I have high blood pressure, protein in my urine, some swelling in my face and hands, and potentially other symptoms. The doctor said the good thing is that we are catching it early, before it causes severe problems."

"What are the downsides to this?"

"It could permanently damage my organs, and could lead to chronic hypertension and heart disease later in life. For the baby, it can limit the amount of oxygen and nutrients the baby receives, and the chances of the baby being stillborn go up." I shuddered in a breath.

"Oh, Steph", said my mother. I could hear the tears in her voice.

"I'm scared, Mom", I said quietly.

She sniffled. "I know, baby girl, but I have faith that you'll be okay. How are you planning on treating it?"

"I've started medication for high blood pressure and have been put on sick leave from work, and I have to avoid stressful situations. That's why I don't want Grandma and Val to know. They will make everything worse. Grandma will tell everyone that I am dying, and I'll have to deal with people expressing their condolences when I see them in the street. She will sensationalize it, and I don't want to be the source of gossip."

"I can see that. But what about Val?"

"Things aren't good between Val and me right now. For some reason, she has become very jealous of me and the space I am in my life. She is constantly making pot shots and saying hurtful things, and she is constantly making me cry. Even at our wedding, I ran into her in the bathroom and she told me that Ranger didn't like me, that he was only marrying me for the baby and he would leave me as soon as the baby was born. When I saw her last Sunday, she told me that Ranger having to go to Little Rock was proof that he was going to leave me and that he secretly hated me. She keeps telling that he will run off with the babysitter and that I don't deserve someone as wonderful as him. She tells me that I'm just a screw-up and a reject and a loser, and I could never hang onto someone like Ranger, and she has even told me that she would be a better partner for Ranger than I ever would be."

"That was why you were crying in the bathroom at your wedding?"

"Yes. Val seems to take delight over upsetting me, and I don't want her to know about my problems so that I don't have to hear her crow about how she is a better mother, that I don't deserve kids, and she is a better daughter because she has been able to deliver five babies successfully."

"She isn't a better daughter", said my mother. "She's just a different daughter. And I understand why you don't want to tell her. I have also heard her make pot shots, but I thought they were transient things meant to be funny. I didn't realize it was as serious as it was."

"Ranger said that I always have the ability to change my mind later and tell the two of them then, but in the meantime I don't have to tell them if I don't want to. He also said that my not telling them is a reflection of what they have done in the past rather than me just being mean. I feel bad for not telling them, but I'd feel even worse if I did."

"I'm pleased that you have told me then."

"We found, when I was in the hospital, that every time I thought about telling Grandma and Val – or even every time I just thought about Val and everything she was saying to me – my blood pressure spiked. My doctor has told me to stay away from them for the remainder of my pregnancy. He wants me to avoid stress as much as possible, and to rest as much as I can."

"Are you planning on telling Lula and Connie and Vinnie?" Lula and Connie worked with my cousin Vinnie at the bonds office, and they were two of my closest friends.

"No. However, I will tell the staff here at Rangeman. They are good at keeping secrets and, to be honest, I have to explain why I am going on sick leave for the next three months."

"Okay. Can I come to see you? Perhaps your dad and I could visit and leave your grandmother at home?"

"I'd like that, Mom. As I said, I wanted you to know. And as Ranger said, your support will mean a lot to me and will help keep me calm. I just need to stay as calm as I can."

"So you have started taking blood pressure medication and have been told to avoid stressful situations and to take time off work. What else are you doing?"

"I'm keeping my feet up as much as possible and am lying down for much of the day on my left side so that the weight of the baby isn't on my blood vessels. I'm sleeping a lot and am drinking lots of water. I have to increase the amount of protein I eat to make up for the protein loss in my urine. I have to see my doctor three times a week as he monitors things, and I have the staff doctor monitoring things for three of the other days in a week. I am starting therapy to learn meditation and other stress-reducing techniques, and will be working with the staff trainer doing yoga and gentle stretching exercises to help me reduce stress as well, and to prepare for the baby to be born. I have to have regular blood and urine tests, and more frequent ultrasounds. If it gets worse, I'll have to be hospitalized and/or the baby will have to be induced before she comes to term. Everything I do will be tailored to trying to keep the baby in there as long as we can. The longer we can keep her in there, the higher the chances that she will be healthy when she is born."

"I'll go to church and say a prayer for you. Do you think that your dad and I could come after dinner tonight to see you?"

"I'd like that. How will you get out of the house without Grandma?"

"I have my ways", she said. I could hear her smile as she said, "I was thinking that your dad and I haven't gone out on a date recently. That would be a nice thing to do, wouldn't it?"

I laughed. "I love you, Mom."

I could hear my mother smile. "I love you too, baby girl. Do you have an appointment with the doctor today?"

"Yes, at two."

"Then we'll hear all about it when we come for our visit tonight." She paused. "Thank you for telling me, Steph."

"I wanted you to know."

"Take care of yourself, and I'll see you tonight."

I hung up the phone a few moments later, and smiled. It had gone better than I had anticipated, and my mom had even called me 'baby girl'. She hadn't done that in years.

Life was good.


	25. Chapter 25

Ranger returned from his appointment with Gabriel, and he looked less tense than he had when he had gone down. "How did it go?" I said.

Ranger smiled slightly. "Gabriel was a good support, as always. He has increased my support sessions to twice a week until the baby is born. While I know lots of ways of reducing stress – I had to learn them as a Ranger – Gabriel is reviewing many of those ways with me. He wants to make sure that I am as calm as possible, to help you be as calm as possible. While I know what to do, without practicing those stress-relieving tools on a regular basis I have forgotten some of the techniques and need to brush up on others. How did your phone call go with your mother?"

"Good…extremely good, actually. My mom understood why I didn't want to tell my grandmother and sister. She said that she had heard Val making pot shots but hadn't realized that it was as serious as it was, and she was just thankful, I think, that she and my dad were told. She said that she and my dad hadn't gone out on a date in a while, and she thought she'd tell my grandmother that they were going out to spend some time together. In reality, my dad and my mom will be coming here for a visit. My parents are planning on visiting tonight after dinner."

"Did you want to invite them for a meal?"

"Maybe sometime, thanks, but not this time. I want to see first how they do on getting out of the house without my grandmother in tow."

"Okay. That is always an option if you want."

"Thanks." I took a bite of the sandwich that Ranger had brought up from the break room for me. It was a turkey and cranberry and stuffing sandwich, and it was loaded with fillings. It was the tastiest sandwich that I had ever had, and I guessed that my cravings had changed from cheese to turkey and all the trimmings. I said that to Ranger and he smiled. "I'm glad to hear that, since Ella said that she was making us a turkey dinner tonight."

I grinned. There would be nothing that I would like better.

We finished our lunches and discarded our wrappings, and Ranger turned to me. "Are you ready for your doctor's appointment?"

I sighed. In truth, I was nervous as to what the doctor was going to say.

"I wonder if the medication will have had a chance to work yet", said Ranger. "I forgot to ask the doctor how long it would take to have an effect."

"We could have asked the pharmacist as well", I said, "but I forgot to ask him too."

"We can ask at our appointment today."

Ranger handed me my purse as I shoved my feet into my boots, and he helped me put my coat on. "Did your mother say what time she and your father will be here tonight?" said Ranger.

"She didn't. She just said after dinner. Since they eat at six, that means they will probably be here between seven and seven-thirty."

Ranger led me out of the apartment and shut the door behind us, and led me to the elevator. He held my hand as we waited for it.

"I made an appointment with Miles for Monday afternoon to work on stretches and strength building exercises that are good for pregnancy", I said. "He penciled me in for every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons at two, except for today. I plan on working with him when we get back. My appointment is at three, but I told him that I might not make it if the doctor is running late. He said, though, that it was the only time he had available to train me today. It worked out well, as it is before my five o'clock appointment with Livy."

"Is he able to work you in on the weekend as well?"

"No, he isn't", I said. "He said he was booked solid on his weekend appointments for the next few months. Apparently, weekend appointments are popular."

"I'm glad that he is able to work you in three times a week."

"Me too. I talked to him for a few minutes today, and he said my appointment today will largely be talking rather than doing. He wants to get a good feel as to what I want to accomplish and the restrictions that I am working under. He also wants to do some testing and fitness assessments."

"I think he will be a good resource, although it will be a bit of a learning curve for him. He probably hasn't had to deal with pregnant women since he was doing his training certificate."

"What is his training?"

"He is actually a physiotherapist who put himself through school as a physical trainer and, when he finished school, he decided that he liked training more than physiotherapy. With the job that he does working for us, he is able to go a bit of both. We are very lucky to have him on staff."

"Does he also teach self-defense lessons?"

"He teaches some of them. I've been thinking about teaching a class myself. Now that I'm not training people for PMC, I find that I am missing the challenge of teaching. I also miss training you now that you are pregnant and I look forward to getting back in the gym with you when you have delivered Tia. I've been trying to increase the number of things that I do for fun, and I thought that offering a weekly class could be a good source of stress relief." When Ranger had started working with Gabriel, Gabriel had pointed out to him that he did very little for fun and very little for himself. He said that Ranger was in danger of burning out. With Gabriel's encouragement and guidance, Ranger had reduced his work week and had started to take some time off to do things he liked. He started cooking more and spending more time with friends, and working out in the gym more and talking more on the phone with his family. But perhaps most importantly for me, he started spending more non-work time with me. We had shopped for the baby. We had looked at design plans for our new apartment. We had planned together and dreamed together. And we had relaxed and watched movies together and talked together. He had been more available to me than he had ever been, and he was someone that had traditionally been there for me, no matter what. If it weren't for the preeclampsia, my life would be perfect.

We drove to the parking lot down the street from the medical center. Ranger parked the car and we walked hand-in-hand out of the lot and towards the doctor's office. As we walked, I heard someone run up behind us seconds before a garrote went around my neck and I was pulled back, out of Ranger's hands, and the garrote was pulled tight.

Ranger spun around and stood on the balls of his feet. He looked at the person cutting off my oxygen. "Let her go", he said.

"No", said the man. "She has my uterus."

My vision was going spotty and I knew that, if I was going to do something, I had to do it soon. Otherwise, I would pass out and not be any help to anyone. I turned my head to the side to take some of the pressure off my neck, and I swung my elbow back as hard as I could into his solar plexus. With my elbow being padded, the impact didn't have as much force as I would have liked. However, the slam of my heel against the instep of his shoe did, and the tension on the garrote loosened for a moment.

I sucked in a deep breath of air and wavered for a moment, then lifted my foot and slammed it back into the man's knee. As the man cursed and wobbled on his one good leg, he pulled a switchblade out of his pocket.

Before he could get the knife open, I stepped away from the man and Ranger stepped forward. He spiked his hand up towards the man's nose and broke it. Blood gushed out and I jumped back. My coat was an ivory colour, and I really didn't want blood on it.

Ranger didn't seem to have the same sort of concern. He stepped forward again and grabbed the man's arm and twisted it around. He held the man's arm up behind his back and, as the man struggled, Ranger dislocated the man's shoulder. The man screamed in pain. Ranger turned to me. "Call Morelli", he said, "and as we wait for the police to show up, you can tell me who this man is."

I pulled out my phone and called Joe. I told him where we were and why we needed him to come. He said that he'd be there in a few minutes. When I finished talking to Joe, I said to Ranger, "this is the man who locked me in the freezer. He was the man who decided to kill me and took steps to ensure that I died."

Ranger dislocated his other shoulder and broke his elbow.

"Ranger, he's not worth it." I put my hand on his arm and felt the tension, felt him vibrating in anger.

"He was resisting arrest."

"That may be, but I need you. I need you when I have nightmares about all those dead corpses. I need you when I am scared about the baby. I need you to be there, and if you continue you'll kill him you won't be there for me."

Ranger shuddered in a breath and I could see him collecting his threads of control again. We stood there for some time quietly as I gave space to Ranger to come back to himself. After a few minutes, when I decided Ranger was in full possession of his faculties again, I turned to the sobbing and whimpering man. "What the hell did you want with me?"

"We don't want you. We want your uterus. On Monday night, we caught you and one of the guys put it out that we had a pregnant woman's body available. We had an offer of twenty-five thousand for your uterus. That's a lot of money. But then you were rescued and you didn't die. I guess we could have found any pregnant woman, but we knew where you were – at the Rangeman building – and we knew that you were one of the key witnesses against us. We decided that it was a case of two birds and one stone – we needed a uterus and it would be helpful to us not to have you around to testify against us. So I've been hanging around Rangeman hoping to find you and follow you, and kill you and take your body back to AnatSci for processing. It was a good plan."

"Except then you would take an attempted murder charge and make it a murder charge."

"I already have to go to court. Besides, no one would know that I had killed you. They hadn't caught it when I killed the other people, did they?"

I stilled. "What other people?" I said. I looked at Ranger in surprise, and tightened my eyes when he didn't looked as shocked as I was. I knew, looking at him, that he already knew this man had killed before.

"We have been processing donated bodies for two years. But there have been times that we haven't had enough body parts." He shrugged his shoulders. "It's not like the industry is regulated, so no one knows that I've been killing bodies."

"Have you been killing all those people using garrotes?"

"Yes", said the man. "My workmates call me Garrote Gil."

I stared at him and rubbed my sore neck. "Catchy name", I said.

Morelli came running down the street to us. "I've called a unit to come and take this man to jail", he said. He blanched when he saw my neck. He turned to the man and plowed him in the stomach with a hard fist.

"Fuck! Police brutality!" said the man.

"You were resisting arrest", said Morelli, "and there isn't anyone here that will say otherwise."

"I don't think you need a unit to pick him up", sadi Ranger. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice as he said, "Steph broke his knee and maybe his foot, I broke his nose and his elbow and dislocated both of his shoulders. He's not going anywhere other than to the hospital in a lockdown unit."

Morelli smiled. "That makes me feel better." He called in an order for the paramedics and cancelled the order for the unit before looking at Ranger. "What do you have?"

"This is Garrote Gil", said Ranger. He told Joe that Gil was the person who had locked me in the freezer, and what Gil had told us. He explained why my uterus was so valuable and why they needed it, and he told Morelli that Garrote Gil had intended to kill me and that he had killed many other times.

"I figured that", said Morelli, "although I didn't know who was the person who had done the killing. However, as I told you, when we were processing the heads we discovered nine that belong to missing persons reports so we figured that someone associated with the plant had been doing the killing."

"You didn't tell us?" I said.

"I was trying to keep your blood pressure down. Besides, I told Ranger."

I glared both at him and at Ranger. "Don't you think that was information that I needed to know?"

"Not really", said Morelli. "I wanted you to be far, far away from this case. If it weren't for me getting you involved in the case in the first place, you would never have been locked in the freezer." He swallowed hard.

I could see how much Morelli was struggling and a wave of sympathy washed over me. I put my hand on his arm and squeezed slightly. "It's not your fault."

He sighed. "I'll be by your apartment later with a witness statement for you to sign. Are you on your way to the doctor's now?"

"We are", said Ranger.

"Then I'll let you get on your way", said Morelli. "I'll see you later to find out how it went."

The ambulance screamed up and the paramedics rushed out. They looked at me. "Your neck looks painful", they said. "Do you need transport to the hospital?"

"An ice pack will do", said Ranger. "She's not actually your patient. Your patient is the one moaning over there."

The paramedic retrieved an ice pack, cracked it and handed it to me. "Ten minutes on, ten minutes off", he said.

"Thank you." I held the ice pack to my neck, and Ranger put his hand on the small of my back to guide me to the doctor's office. We luckily made it the rest of the way without incident.

"I wanted to kill him", said Ranger. "I could have killed him when I found out that he was the person who had locked you in the freezer."

"But luckily you didn't", I said. "While I would have liked to have seen him dead, I wouldn't want the shit storm that would have come our way if you had killed him."

"Thank you for talking me down", said Ranger. "I have never lost control like that before. I don't know if I would have stopped if you hadn't been there calming me down. You help me retain control."

"You wouldn't have killed him. You are too good a person, too controlled a person, too honorable a person to have killed him."

"I have killed over less."

"I'm not worth killing someone over."

Ranger kissed me. "On the contrary. You are the only person I have met who I can say that you are definitely worth killing a person over."

My eyes filled with tears and I looked at him. "I love you too."

We got into the doctor's office and registered with the nurse. It wasn't long before I was taken back and weighed. As I had predicted, I weighed three pounds more than I had the week before.

The nurse left us to wait for the doctor, and I looked at Ranger. He still looked tense, and I thought he probably would until he spoke to Morelli and we had closure on the case. I thought that maybe Morelli could stay for dinner and mentioned that to Ranger, and Ranger thought that was a good idea. He texted the changed dinner plans to Ella so that she made three plates of food for dinner when she dished out the turkey dinner, and he had just finished sending the invitation through to Morelli when the doctor came into the office. He looked at me and blanched. Apparently my neck looked bad. "What the hell happened to you?" he said. "I just saw you yesterday."

I smiled sadly. "So remember that man who locked me in the freezer to kill me?"

The doctor plopped down on his stool.

"He came back at me." I told him what had happened on our way to his office, and that the man was now in custody and had admitted to killing several other people and his method of killing them. I told him why he wanted my uterus and how much money it was worth. "So apparently, I'm a valuable person", I said with a smile.

"You were a valuable person without getting yourself almost killed", said the doctor. "I'm not looking forward to seeing what attempted murder two separate times this week has done to your blood pressure." He took out the cuff and attached it to my arm.

"You're focusing on the wrong news", I said. "You're focusing on the fact that I was almost killed twice this week. You need to focus on the fact that this man was caught, that he will never walk normally again, and that we didn't kill him when we wanted to. It's all good news."

The doctor didn't look convinced. "Don't talk and don't move", he said, and he took my blood pressure using an automated machine. He wrote down the readings when I was finished. "Amazing", he said. "It's no higher than it was when you were in the hospital."

"How long will it take the blood pressure medication to work?" I said.

"About three weeks to work fully", said the doctor. "However, it's a continuing scale. There will be changes that happen a little at a time until your blood pressure comes down completely."

"What is her pressure?" said Ranger.

"150/89", said the doctor. "How have you been doing about changing things around in your life?"

"I start therapy at five this afternoon and have my first appointment with the physiotherapist this afternoon at three. I have booked exercising to occur every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and talk therapy every Tuesday and Thursday. I'll be here every Monday and Wednesday and Friday as well. I have told my mother and my mother and father are coming for a visit after dinner. My mother has promised not to tell my sister or my grandmother. My mother said that she understood and the only person she desperately wanted to tell was my father, which was the one person I didn't mind her telling. She was very supportive." Tears came to my eyes. "She even called me baby girl."

"Baby girl?" said the doctor. He helped me lie back on the examining table and he measured my baby bump.

"She used to call me that all the time when I was little, but she stopped calling me that when I was in my teens. It made me feel loved when I was little and I hardly noticed when she didn't call me that any more. However, I noticed it when she called me that today on the phone. I felt loved again, and like I wasn't a failure as a person just for having this condition. I felt like it was okay to not be perfect."

"Your family doesn't expect you to be perfect, surely?" said the doctor.

"I don't know", I said. "My sister was always perfect, so I've always felt like a lesser person because I am not."

The doctor got out the Doppler machine, spread on some jelly, and ran the wand over my tummy. We could hear the whump-whump of the baby's heartbeat in the room. "No one is perfect", he said to me. He looked down at the reading and wrote it down on his chart. He handed me a tissue and Ranger popped to his feet, took the tissue away from me and cleaned my tummy for me. He pulled up my skirt waistband and pulled down my shirt, and helped me sit up.

"How is Steph today?" asked Ranger.

The doctor smiled. "The baby's heartbeat is still nice and strong, and there weren't any signs of distress. Her blood pressure, as I said, was the same as it was in the hospital, and I hope as the medication kicks in that her blood pressure comes down again. Her baby bump is growing right on target. She has gained quite a bit of weight in the last week, but I suspect that it is attributed to water retention rather than anything else. Try to drink lots of water. I know that seemed counterintuitive to drink water to get rid of water, but it works. And again, try to avoid having the kinds of stress that you had today. While it didn't raise your blood pressure, I'm sure it didn't help it either." He turned to Ranger. "Let's take your blood pressure", he said. "I suspect that it is quite high as well."

Ranger looked like he was about to refuse, before he looked at me. I guess that he could see, despite me smiling, that I was worried about him. He sat on the examining bed beside me and the doctor affixed the cuff on his arm. We were silent as the doctor took his blood pressure. "Amazing", he said.

"What was it?" I said. I really hoped that Ranger was okay. I needed him to be healthy. I needed him, period.

The doctor smiled. "110/72". He turned to me. "I did that so that you could eliminate one source of worry from your life."

I looked at him gratefully. "Thank you", I said.

He stood and shook our hands. "I'll see you Monday. I hope you have a quiet weekend."

I grinned. "Thank you. You too."

The doctor laughed and led us out of the examining room, and he turned to enter his second examining room.

Ranger and I walked out of the doctor's office as Ranger's phone rang. He looked at the phone, and answered it with a terse "hi". He listened for a moment. "That's great. Then we'll see you for dinner." I smiled. It was Morelli on the phone, and it sounded like he'd be able to stay for a bite to eat. "Yes, we're done now. We're just on our way back to Rangeman." He listened again and smiled. "Morelli wants to know how your blood pressure is", he said to me.

"Great", I said. "It's no higher than it was at my lowest in the hospital, despite our excitement this afternoon." Ranger smiled and relayed the message to him.

Ranger smiled. "I'll let her know", he said. "See you soon." He put away his phone and captured my hand.

"What did Joe say?" I said.

"He said that, seeing that you've been attacked twice on your way to the doctor's office in the last five months, he thinks that you should always go with a bodyguard of some sort." I had been attacked before Christmas as well. Ranger grinned. "And he said that, if I was busy, he would be willing to accompany you in exchange for a chance to listen to the heartbeat."

"Hell, if we want to make him really happy, we should let him come to an ultrasound as well."

Ranger thought about smiling. "That can be arranged."

"You would really let him come to an ultrasound?"

Ranger's lips quirked up. "At the end of the day, you are coming home to me and sleeping in my bed. I suspect that Morelli will want to play an important role in our baby's life. I can afford to share in the joy associated with seeing her on the screen. Ultimately, I know that he's just a friend and it will never be anything more. I know it will make him happy but, more importantly, I know that it would make you happy."

"I'm just excited about the baby and want to share it. But while I want to share it, I don't want him feeling the baby's kicks and jabs by placing his hands on my tummy. That seems a little gross for anyone other than you to do."

Ranger smiled. "I'm glad to hear that." He paused. "Let's go home and play with the baby a bit. The ultrasound technician told us once that her husband could touch her tummy and the baby would kick back in that place."

"Yes."

"Let's go see if Tia wants to play some tag."

_~ The End ~_

_Thank you for reading Snatched 37. I hope you liked it. I will start posting Exhumed 38 today. - Sarah_


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